When in the 1990s-00s people posted Dilbert strips, it wasn't, IME, because they identified with the character Dilbert.

They did it because they saw in their work environment echoes of the environment portrayed in the comic, of which Dilbert was as much a part as the PHB.

All of us did in the day, and most of the strips were common from multiple people for a given office, for the obvious reason.

This seemed so blatantly obvious (and the answer if asked "why did you put this one up?") that I'm agog at anyone thinking otherwise.

For what it's worth, the only company where I posted Dilbert art (two animation cels that my wife bought for me from eBay) was nothing like the Dilbert world. It's just that I loved Dilbert and I thought it was a funny decoration.

But if there are no Dilbert cartoons on the wall, it might be because the PHB has banned them.

This is also a warning sign.

this feels like the setup to a Dilbert strip

Very true, Wally is my spirit animal.

It's why I don't watch The Office or Office Space. Just too much like the real office.

Someone told me early in my career that the longer you work in an office, the more Office Space transforms from a comedy to a documentary. They weren't wrong...

The day before the night I first saw Office Space, way after becoming an underground hit, I had my first encounter with the TPS communication barrage. It made the movie funnier and my work life sadder.

Similar thing happened with Idiocracy recently...

Parks & Recreation for anyone who's worked in a Government department.

Also Silicon Valley, albeit for a narrower audience. It’s so real it’s triggering.

Yeah that. Some ethics and management training programmes leveraged it because they thought it was popular. I still have a dilbert ethics training certificate somewhere as a reminder of how fucked up corp culture is.

American corp in Europe for ref. Defence. Absolute top tier stereotype asshats.

I feel your pain. I’ve been to some highly dilbertised companies myself.

There is a Dilbert takeaway i use at work today: the only thing an employee really wants is more money for the same work/pain, or less work/pain for the same money. I dont do trinkets and titles. My people get as much time off as i can provide, and i will sign most anything that means they get paid a little more.

Titles are useful, because they are essentially free to the company, and (some) employees value them. And valuing titles can be rational, even if worker herself doesn't care, because they can look good on the CV and to friends and families.

Some 'trinkets' are worth more to the employees than they cost the company to provide. So it's rational to provide them. Think of Wally's beloved coffee for an example. Or look at Googlers' lunch.

I believe a lot of workers want a fulfilling career, a sense of purpose and the knowledge their work matters. After they have their material needs covered, other aspects start becoming dominant.

Then you've totally missed the entire point.

It shows the work environment shares negatives aspects depicted in the comic strips. This is reason for alarm.