While working at Pacific Bell in 1989, Adams created Dilbert; by the mid-1990s the strip had gained national prominence in America and began to reach a worldwide audience.

[12] His submissions of Dilbert and other comic panels to various publications, including The New Yorker and Playboy, were not published, but an inspirational letter from a fan persuaded Adams to keep trying.

Adams attributed his success to his idea of including his email address in the panels, which resulted in feedback and suggestions from readers.

[12] Logitech CEO Pierluigi Zappacosta invited Adams to impersonate a management consultant, which he did wearing a wig and false mustache.

He tricked Logitech managers into adopting a mission statement that Adams described as "so impossibly complicated that it has no real content whatsoever".

On June 28, 2020, Adams asserted to his followers on Twitter that the show had been canceled because he was white and UPN had made a decision to shift toward African-American viewers.

[22] In 2023, Adams announced in a pinned tweet that he had re-published God's Debris for free for his subscribers, and would shortly publish an AI-voiced audiobook version.

[27] Real Coffee with Scott Adams has featured guests such as Naval Ravikant,[28] Ed Latimore,[29] Dave Rubin,[30] Erik Finman,[31] Greg Gutfeld,[32] Matt Gaetz,[33] Ben Askren,[34] Carpe Donktum,[35] Mark Schneider,[36] Steve Hsu,[37] Michael Shellenberger,[38][39] Carson Griffith,[40][41] Shiva Ayyadurai,[42] James Nortey,[43] Clint Morgan,[44] and Bjørn Lomborg.

[48] In 2020, Adams said: "For context, I expect my Dilbert income to largely disappear in the next year as newspapers close up forever.

[50][22] Adams co-founded the service WhenHub, which has been described by Gizmodo as "similar to Cameo ... except instead of pre-recorded messages from movie stars and rappers, it offers live chats with a range of subject-matter experts".

[51][52] In 2019, Adams briefly received negative media attention when during the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting he posted a tweet suggesting that witnesses download the WhenHub app and "set your price to take calls".

He appeared in the season 4 episode "Moments of Transition" as a character named "Mr. Adams" who hires former head of security Michael Garibaldi to locate his megalomaniacal dog and cat.

[56] He had a cameo in "Review", a third-season episode of the TV series NewsRadio, in which Matthew Brock (played by Andy Dick) becomes an obsessed Dilbert fan.

[64] He has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher,[65] Commonwealth Club of California,[66] Fox News[67] and Berkeley Haas.

[82] Of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Adams said: "If you're an undecided voter, and male, you're seeing ... a celebration that your role in society is permanently diminished.

"[83] Adams said that he temporarily endorsed Hillary Clinton out of fear for his own life, stating that he had received direct and indirect death threats ("Where I live, in California, it is not safe to be seen as supportive of anything Trump says or does.

[86] He has also stated that writing positively about Trump and supporting him ended his public speaking career and decreased his income by about 40% and number of friends by about 75%.

[84][87] Adams predicted in March 2020 that Trump, Sanders, and Joe Biden would all contract COVID-19 and that one of them would die from it by the end of the year; in December 2020, when all three men remained alive (although Trump had caught the virus), Politico named Adams's prediction one of "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year".

[88] Adams received further attention in December 2021, in reference to his July 2020 predictions that if Biden were to win the 2020 U.S. presidential election, "there's a good chance you will be dead within the year", "Republicans will be hunted", and that "[p]olice will stand down",[89] none of which ultimately occurred.

[90] On September 30, 2021, Adams had also tweeted, "My worst prediction of all time was 'If Biden gets elected, there's a good chance you will be dead in a year.'

[93] After a 2022 mass shooting, Adams tweeted that society leaves parents of troubled teenage boys with only two options: to either watch people die, or murder their own son.

[94][95] Adams's comments were roundly criticized, including by James Gunn, who described himself as a former "violent teenager addicted to drugs [who] entered recovery with the help & love of his family".

"[102] On June 28, 2020, Adams said on Twitter that the Dilbert TV show was cancelled because he was white and UPN had decided to focus on an African-American audience, and that he had been "discriminated against".

[103] In a series of comic strips in September 2022, Dilbert parodied environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) strategies.

Part of the plotline involved a black character who "identif[ied] as white" and the company management asking him if he could also identify as gay.

[117][118] In response to the incident, Adams said his remarks were hyperbole and that the stories reported about them ignored the context; he conjectured that nobody would disagree with his main points and stated he disavowed racists.

[124] Adams married Shelly Miles aboard a yacht, the Galaxy Commodore, on July 22, 2006, in San Francisco Bay, in a ceremony conducted by the ship's captain.

[132] He credits affirmations for many of his achievements, including scoring in the ninety-fourth percentile on a difficult qualification exam for business school and creating Dilbert's success.

[140] He received the Orwell Award in 1998 for his participation in "Mission Impertinent" for San Jose Mercury News West Magazine.

[20] Adams has coined several words and phrases over the years, including Confusopoly (businesses that stay afloat only by intentionally misleading their customers), the Dilbert principle (a variant on the Peter principle), Elbonia as a term for non-specific overseas countries, and Pointy-Haired Boss (PHB) and Induhvidual as insults.