Engineers generally make lousy businesspeople, and their downfall is usually the belief that a business and the people in it can be managed according to sound engineering principles. You couldn't have come up with a better illustration of my point if I'd fed you the lines to write.

We did a whole thread on tech companies run by their tech founders vs. tech companies run by rent-a-CEOs (I don't remember which board, and I don't want to go fish it up again). While I know of some engineers who had trouble with the bank board room glad-handing part of things, I think there are plenty of exceptions to your theory. Enough of them that you simply have to mention the "Harvard MBA Syndrome" around most of my acquaintances, and they'd know what you mean.

To be sure, there are many companies that are primarily about people and organization, with very little science and tech involved, and "people persons" excel in these areas. Sam Walton comes to mind, among others.

Why aren't you running your own company, Tom? Hmmmm?

Same reason I don't have my own blog. Who needs the aggravation?

In the companies I've been a part of, I've managed to settle myself into a comfortable second or third banana position, often making almost as much money as the CEO. If you look at a typical organization chart from one of those places, you see the guy who runs things, and on the end of a single line to the right or left, a box with my name in it. There are no other boxes connected to mine. I liked it that way.

Now I work out of my garage, and in a good year, pull in six figures for doing work at my own pace, and answering to very, very few people. I'm not rich by any means--but I get by.

LS is right. A comic character doesn't stand up to very much analysis, but his character is inconsistent. He is supposed to be a near-technical genius, but he behaves exactly like someone who really isn't all that good at what he does and has to try hard just to keep the job he has.

Dilbert spends most of his life bitching about his lot, not being happy he doesn't have the headaches of being a CEO. And under those circumstances, he should muster the balls to go out and make things happen on his own.