Forgotten Employee (2002)
I find it interesting how many people on the linked HN threads for previous discussions say they've been in similar situations. I've never had a position where I didn't have anything at all to do for an extended amount of time, though I've only worked for one really large company.I did work at a pretty reasonable pace on projects that were obviously not a practical idea and would probably never amount to much, while numerous good ideas that could have saved substantial money got ignored. But I didn't really know of anyone who really didn't do anything. Though there was one guy who had less than a dozen commits in a year, all just a couple of lines. But after trying to work with him on something for another project, I think he really was just that bad at coding.