Name: The Dilbert Principle
ISBN: 9780887308581

The Dilbert Principle

In a world of TQM, reengineering, and empowered secretaries. Dilbert has become the poster boy of corporate America. Millions of office dwellers tack Scott Adams's comic strip to their walls when murdering the boss is not an acceptable option. After seventeen years of working in a cubicle and reading thousands of e-mail messages from readers who've been "downsized", "rightsized", "flattened", and put in charge of "quality teams", Scott Adams can no longer restrict himself to a single artistic medium. Now, in an unabashed attempt to cash in on the lucrative business book market, Scott brings us The Dilbert Principle. In twenty-six provocative, illustrated chapters, Scott Adams reveals the secrets of management in every company, including swearing your way to success, faking quality, business plans: world's greatest fiction, trolls in the accounting department, humiliation as a management tool, selling bad products to stupid people, and more!

What Hacker News says

enderforthJan 2026

I didn't always agree with Scott Adams on everything he did and said, but "The Dilbert Principle" taught me more about living in a corporation and management than any other book on business and his dilbert comics were a source of endless wisdom and amusement, which I use often today.

Farewell Scott, you are now God's debris.

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malux85Jan 2026

“Engineers, Scientists and other odd people” chapter in the book “The Dilbert Principle” is one of the funniest things I have ever read

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ALittleLightJan 2026

The first email I ever wrote was to Scott Adams. He actually replied!

I was a child and had just read and enjoyed one of his older books, maybe the Dilbert Principle. I came from a religious household and I was surprised by something in the book that revealed him to be an atheist.

I looked up his email, or maybe it was in the back of the book, and wrote him a quick message about how and why he should convert. He replied to me (unconvinced) and I replied back, at which point he realized I was a child and the conversation ended.

When I heard he was dying of cancer I wrote him another email, again offering my own unsolicited thoughts, this time on cancer and experimental treatments. He did not reply, but I thought there was a kind of symmetry to it -- I wrote him towards the start of my life and again towards the end of his.

Interesting guy, I've enjoyed several of his books and the comics for many years. He had a big impact. Tough way to die.

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yellowappleJan 2026

My interpretation is that there are two different senses of “family” at play here:

- The people with whom we share close bonds, stronger than ordinary friendship; we absolutely can (and should) choose them, and choose them wisely.

- The people who've disproportionately shaped our development into who we are as persons today; barring sci-fi technologies like time machines or false memory implantation, that's pretty hard to change.

GP's comment seems to be more about the latter, and of Scott Adams being in that category. I agree with that in my case, too; both the Dilbert comics and The Dilbert Principle were formative for me both personally and professionally — which amplified the pain I felt when Adams started to “go off the deep end” and reveal himself to be less of a Dilbert and more of a PHB.

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alexpotatoJan 2026

For those looking for a "successor theory" to the Dilbert Principle, I highly suggest Venkatesh Rao's Gervais Principle [0].

To use Dilbert terms: Adams would say that PHB is dumb and he is promoted into management as that's where he can do the least damage.

Rao would say that PHB is actually put there by upper management to be a combination of:

- fall guy/lightning rod to take blame for failed projects

- dumb subordinates are less likely to try to take your job (dumb doesn't mean unintelligent. Rather, Rao uses the term "clueless" to highlight smart people who are not political)

0 - https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

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alexpotatoJan 2026

I was a long time Scott Adams fan with the Dilbert Principle being one of my favorite books.

What I found most interesting about him was around the time Trump was running for president the first time, Adams was one of the first people to point out that Trump was, to use Adams' terms, a "master persuader". No one else at the time seemed to be talking about this and it was fascinating to see a humorist have this take/insight.

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