Absolutely. In addition to startups, I&#x27;ve worked with quite a few small-to-medium sized agencies, and as you say, they tend to have a small but manageable amount of Dilbertiness.<p>As I see it, the crucial difference between Dilbert and non-Dilbert is responsiveness to unhappiness and the ability to learn from failure.<p>In Dilbert-land, an entire engineering department can grow to be silently miserable. Outside of Dilbert-land, many people would raise their voices and with enough protest, major change would happen. That&#x27;s because management knows that bad morale is deadly, and can&#x27;t afford to restaff after mass departures. And outside Dilbert-land, people tend to not see themselves as trapped, and really will, indeed, quit.<p>Also, medium-sized agencies simply cannot afford to have more than 10% of their projects utterly fail - their cash-flow is too limited, and they live on their reputation and good relationships with clients. Unlike the Dilberts, they simply can&#x27;t walk straight into failure over and over.