Dilbert to lose his tie

Dilbert is finally going to lose his tie, catching up with the casual dress code that has long been the norm for his fellow software engineers.

Scott Adams, the cartoon character’s creator, said in an FT interview there was a “100 per cent chance” Dilbert would go casual in the coming years.

“I’ve been watching the audience to see if they demand it, and so far they have not. People have commented, but it’s a weak preference, at most. But I have always imagined that sometime between now and my ultimate retirement of the strip he’ll go to casual,” he said.

Mr Adams, 56, has already produced more than 9,000 daily Dilbert cartoons. He said he might continue drawing them until he is in his early 60s, when he would concentrate on pursuing other ideas, such as a recent plan he outlined to revolutionise education.

Dilbert’s creator on life beyond the cubicle

Since 1989, Scott Adams, now 56, has drawn and scripted something in the region of 9,000 comic strips and still produces one a day

Dilbert’s trademark upturned striped tie and white shirt (with pens in the top pocket) have featured in the cartoon satire on office life since Mr Adams started drawing the strip in 1989.

While the lack of identifiable background – apart from the inevitable cubicles – has allowed the strip to stand the test of time, its creator is conscious the technology sector has moved on, granting cult-like status and great rewards to programmers.

Dilbert is a “[Steve] Wozniak-type of engineer”, like the co-founder of Apple, who is “not chasing the money”, according to Mr Adams. But he said “an engineer of his quality, MIT graduate, 20 years in the workplace . . . he’d be living in a big house right now.”

Mr Adams’ autobiographical new book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big describes how he started work on Dilbert while at Pacific Bell, the telecoms company. The success of the strip – which also spawned the “Dilbert principle” that only the incompetent get promoted to management – finally allowed him to quit the office and work as a full-time cartoonist in the mid-1990s.

“Part of the reason that I can still come up with material after being out the workplace is that if you put three people in a room and one of them thinks they’re in charge, you get the same dynamic every time,” Mr Adams said.

Silicon Valley has progressed from ties, through button-down shirts and chinos, to an anything-goes dress code, epitomised by the hoodies sported by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Dilbert’s creator did not specify what sort of casual dress his hero would adopt except to say it would not be distinctive: “There is no such thing. The whole point of casual business clothes is bland.”