Workplace Satire,Filed for the Record
J.A.Q. is a workplace satire comic about MaJESTa Software, a company that ships certainty and files the consequences. If you have ever watched a decision survive four meetings and one reorganisation, this is your genre.
What workplace satire is
Workplace satire is the practice of holding a mirror up to the modern office and then filing the mirror as evidence. It takes the vocabulary of performance reviews, transformation roadmaps and quarterly alignment, and it lets that vocabulary run until its own logic becomes the joke.
Nobody has to invent anything. The memo already wrote itself. A reorganisation announced as an investment in people. A dashboard that reports a hundred percent success because the failures were reclassified. A committee formed to decide whether a committee was needed.
J.A.Q. works the same way. Every strip starts from a sentence a real department has said out loud, and then follows it to the place it was always going to end: the moment someone asks the question slightly too late.
The comedy is not cruelty. The targets are the systems, the language and the incentives, never the person stuck holding the ticket.
Who MaJESTa is for
MaJESTa Software is written for the people who sit inside it. Engineers who receive the ticket after the decision. Managers who inherit a roadmap they did not choose. Analysts asked for a number and then asked for a better one. Contractors invited to every meeting and copied on nothing.
You do not need to work in software. You need to have worked somewhere. The org chart in this comic is fictional, the meetings are not.
Three series, one company
J.A.Q.: Just Asking Questions
The main file. One org chart, one transformation roadmap, and a long argument about whether the question was ever meant to be answered. This is where MaJESTa Software, its departments, and its standing committees are introduced.
Open the seriesJAQ Multiverse
The same question asked across every universe at once. Different offices, different org charts, the same meeting, and the same person asking whether anyone checked the numbers before the announcement.
Open the seriesLA2SE
Life as a Systems Engineer. The engineer who lives downstream of every decision the other series makes, and who is asked to make it work anyway. Fewer meetings, more incidents.
Open the seriesStart with the open files
No account, no payment. These case files are open to any reader, which is the only honest way to find out whether the comic is for you.
A Standard Corporate Week
A systems engineer narrates his week, starting with a Monday crash, moving through unproductive strategy meetings and client miscommunications, and finally finding joy in logging off on Friday.
THE SUCCESS CRITERIA
A manager presents a chart showing a 100% success rate based on a transformation model, but admits when questioned that unsuccessful clients are simply reclassified as incomplete transformations to maintain the data.
The Happiest Workplace on the Org Chart
During Culture Week at MaJESTa Software, a manager lectures employees about transparency and inclusion, while an engineer ironically prepares to quit by saving his resume. The strip contrasts the company's corporate branding about belonging with the employee's quiet exit from the organization.
A Week In Corporate Hell
A systems engineer documents his daily grind, reflecting on the futility of sprint reviews, abstract product visions, and an endless barrage of notifications from collaborative tools before finding brief solace on Friday evening.
THE ZERO-BUFFER STRATEGY
In a boardroom meeting, a manager explains a new just-in-time inventory plan to a skeptical colleague. When asked if the plan relies on perfection from all suppliers and forecasts, the manager clarifies that they have simply eliminated contingency as a form of waste.
The Director's Direction
A manager assigns an employee the role of release liaison, tasking them with coordinating across various departments without giving them any actual authority. As the employee inspects a complex release plan with many dependencies, they realize the role offers all of the responsibility with none of the control.
A Week Of Corporate Despair
A systems engineer narrates his work week through five daily panels, reflecting on the frustration of back-to-back meetings, client requests, ownership responsibilities, unproductive brainstorms, and the relief of Friday.
THE FIRST PROBLEM
A man in a white shirt tells his boss that the first step to improvement is identifying problems, but the boss insists they have none because their executive dashboard is all green. The man concludes that the dashboard itself is the problem.
One Seat in the Sandbox
An employee presents a Diagnostic Framework to her colleagues, but her manager dismisses it as too complicated and walks out. Later, a male colleague presents nearly the exact same framework to the group and receives their applause and immediate executive approval, leading the original presenter to sternly request a written record of his 'innovation'.
A Standard Corporate Week
A systems engineer documents the absurdity of his work week, from contradictory management meetings in March to software that overrides his calendar, corporate jargon, manipulated data metrics, and demands to recharge undermined by immediate after-hours alerts.
The Independent Assessment
Two men sit at an office desk discussing a consultant's recommendation for a company-wide transformation platform. The colleague asks if this plan requires more billable consulting services, to which the first man replies that he will ask the consultants to assess that.
The Backend Is Easy
A coworker explains a complicated, twelve-step deployment process for eight isolated software instances as if it were simple. When the main character is later left to deal with a critical system failure caused by this exact process, he realizes he has been left with all the responsibility but none of the authority to fix it.
A Week Of Corporate Futility
A systems engineer chronicles his work week, starting with an unproductive meeting about a competitor's launch and ending with an exhausting video call. Along the way, he struggles with dark mode settings, unhelpful IT advice, and a calendar packed with endless sync meetings.
THE RESILIENCE REQUIREMENT
An executive tells an employee that the company needs a more resilient workforce, prompting the employee to ask how to achieve resilience when changes involve more work, less support, and fewer people. The executive dismisses the concern by demanding less explanation and more enthusiasm.
Load-Bearing Nothing
Two employees discuss the technical impossibility of a requested software feature, leading to a meeting where the request remains unresolved. The strip concludes with the employees acknowledging that they are forced to build complex, risky workarounds for features that cannot be properly implemented.
A Week Of Corporate Existentialism
Across five days, a systems engineer observes the decline of office productivity through chaotic project management, nonsensical roadmaps, recursive retrospective meetings, and finally, closing their laptop with a philosophical detachment from the workplace.
THE EXECUTIVE WORKSITE WALK
An executive complains about the exhaustion of 'leader standard work,' so his colleague advises him to go talk to the people actually doing the work. The executive interprets this by taking a casual stroll on the executive floor and declaring that everything looks fine.
The Tool Says You’re Right
Two coworkers discuss an audit gap regarding 150 unverified requirements, debating the difference between compliance as a tool versus a checkbox. Despite concerns about human review and actual correctness, they conclude that managing risk requires adding more process and documentation, ultimately resulting in a hollow dashboard success while the underlying software failure persists.
A Week Of Corporate Futility
A systems engineer chronicles his work week, starting with delaying difficult tasks to impress executives, navigating dysfunctional design processes, and dealing with constant turnover. By Friday, he sits alone at his desk concluding that he possesses the necessary data to solve problems but lacks the authority to do so without professional risk.
The rest of the run
The open files are the front door. Behind them sits the full archive: every season of the main file, both spinoff series, and each new case file as it is released.
A membership opens the whole run and keeps it open. No tiers inside tiers, no locked anniversary edition, no upsell after checkout.
One membership, the whole run, every series.
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