why silent sacking doesn't include severance package?! do you mean forcing people to quit which doesn't include severance. If there is no work, can't you start working elsewhere (or at least a side consulting job) until they fire and give severance?
You can “help” your friend who is bootstrapping his startup. You can even book a room in the office and meet with your friend there. As long as you are available for work in the office, it can count as “training”. Just don’t be blatant about it. Like, reserve rooms on a different floor every day. Or I imagine that is how it would be done, I definitely didn’t do this when I was benched on this big company for months.
I am genuinely at awe at how out of touch people seem to be. We're talking about software engineers given nothing to do and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars... Yes this is not ideal but let's not act that they're torturing these people or forcing them to clean bathrooms or something.