Scott Adams’s boss at Pacbell in 1985 was (still) an SVP (and my boss) at AT&T in 2012.

There was always a buzz and a whisper whenever someone was frustrated: “SHE’s the boss who inspired Dilbert.”

Internally there was a saying that ATT stands for “Ask The Tentacles.”

I haven’t really read the “funnies” since I was a kid but the few Dilbert comics I ever did read NAILED her org.

I will never forget being paged 1,000 times a night - not even kidding — or having my boss demand I “check sendmail” every time anything and I mean anything went down. Voice? Data? CALEA tunnels? IPTV? Fax? No, I can’t go immediately investigate the actual issue, I have to go into some crusty Solaris boxes the company forgot about 11 years ago and humor some dinosaur with three mansions who probably also directly inspired the Peter Principle in 1969 and are still working there.

Dilbert was BARELY satire.

And that’s enough out of me.

As a product manager in the computer industry from the mid 80s into the 90s, Dilbert really resonated with me as satire--except, as you say, when it was barely satire. Not so much except for occasional later strips that really nailed some specific thing.