Some years ago, Scott Adams, the creator of "Dilbert," was one of roughly 8,000 employees working at the San Ramon office of Pacific Bell. During many of those years, Dani and I were consulting regularly at the same San Ramon building, often in Scott's department. Thus, Scott and I were exposed to the same replicated cubicles, the same idiotic memos, the same pointy-haired bosses -- in short, the same cultural craziness. But from those experiences, Scott created a comic strip that entertained millions and made him rich and famous. I often ask myself, "Why Scott? Why not me?"

During his tenure at PacBell, Scott was gathering fieldstones for his "Dilbert" wall, but I was gathering fieldstones at PacBell to use in my software engineering books. Around that same time, I actually tried to write a cartoon strip -- "Bugsy Coder" -- based on similar materials drawn from the same source. If success had been a matter of who had the better source of fieldstones, I should have been the clear winner. I was a consultant, and PacBell was only one of many clients, while Scott was confined to gathering from one building. So, the difference couldn't have been in our sources.

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