7 months at a job with no boss and no work to do. How common is this?

I had that happen a couple years ago (probably 5 or 6 IIRC). I was working at a bank's consulting company (sort of the bank's own tech outsourcing company, but they also did projects for other external companies).

I was in an insurance project which closed down, so they moved me to another office and told me to await for a new assignment, which didn't arrive until 5 months later (and by then I was so burned out of doing nothing I just changed companies).

At the beginning I'd come to the office, grab a quick coffee and started emailing my manager and trying to get something to do, but eventually, since the response was always to continue waiting, I stopped doing that. I started coming in late, leaving early, "working from home" on Fridays... nobody would check on me, nobody really knew me in the office, so basically I did nothing for the entire 5 months.

I probably stayed that long because the three first months were summer months, so it was pretty useful to do no work and enjoy summer, but as soon as winter came back I started to get burned out.

I believe the issue is that they sorted me out on the first day in that office as one of the new hires, but I had been with the company for over 3 years at that point, so I guess the system messed up. They gave me a non-platformed computer (IIRC it had a stock Windows 7 install, no bank platforming at all), so I quickly set up my private VPN and routed all traffic over there so I could do anything over the Internet without they watching (which I don't think they did anyways). Since this was in IT, using VPNs wasn't something that weird, so it worked.

I'll just say, doing nothing is cool for the first maybe the first two months, after that it becomes the worst thing ever.

I used to drink with big-shot lawyers a lot[1], and have heard a number of stories.

Basically, there are a lot of situations in which lawyers will create a “do not fire” list. The lists generally have an expiration date, but not always.

In this particular case, it could be that state/local laws make it legally problematic to fire someone before they start work. So you have to let them work for a few weeks or months before letting them go. And if the people tracking this list get let go, it could be months or maybe years before they get it all sorted out and let the person go.

One of the posts in that Reddit thread talks about a guy at a manufacturing company who is apparently paid to sit at a desk and do nothing. Well, in some places, you can’t successfully pursue a workers comp claim if the company gives you a desk job at the same salary. So it’s possible that guy got hurt on the factory floor years ago and is now paid his hourly factory worker salary until he retires, and all he has to do is be nice and not sexually harass anyone.

[1] law partners like to “buy” entire tables at charity events, and then expect the associates to fill the chairs. But at the same time, give them so much work they can’t go. I managed to get on a list of people that could show up to events downtown in a nice tuxedo with an hour or two notice, and not be embarrassing. Unlimited top-shelf liquor and excellent food - why wouldn’t you?

Reminds me of this infamous story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6087935

Yeah, so really, this is lightweight, not technical, and probably the sort of thing that's at least frowned on here, if allowed at all, but I saw this published in a post on Bored Panda and couldn't help but wonder about it, having suffered through way too many years of government work, which is basically the same thing, except there you're supposed to show up, eat shit and smile, not really do anything, and be underpaid. This guy seems to have found magic.