A startup I worked at got acquired, and we went to the parent company Christmas party. We used to go to the local market and get drunk, and this place booked an entire posh hotel with a free bar...so a slight difference.

Anyway, we spoke to a few random people, and ended up meeting one guy who was on his own. He had a few drinks with us, and told us that he'd been with the company for about 8 years as a software engineer.

The crazy part is that he was "unassigned" to a team. He had a manager at director level that worked from another country, who had never had a 1:1 with him and was chasing a VP promotion, but he was a team of one with no direct work. He did about a year of actual work, but got moved teams and no one in HR cared.

Over time, he learned that his only expectation was to go into the office, and to have a yearly review with his director - always cancelled. He came in every day, sat in an empty marketing suite, and played Unreal Tournament. He'd occasionally do his own work, and occasionally help others in the company out if someone needed help (usually helping some marketing person with something stupid like email campaigns), but other than that he'd been there for years, doing nothing, and getting paid well.

I can't remember his name, and have tried to find him on LinkedIn to see if he's still there (although not sure he'd have a LinkedIn if he were getting paid for nothing). The company is in insurance, and is a big enough name that he'd probably have a job for life if he could keep the charade up.