I worked at a huge company 30+ years ago (~300K employees). There was an engineer on our floor whose entire team, including his manager, had left the company in a short period of time. The company acted as if the entire team was gone, cancelling all their projects. He fell through the cracks.
Initially he sat at his desk all day reading newspapers and books, ready to do any work he was asked to do. Eventually he got bored and started up his own one-man business that he operated from the office. All the while he continued collecting a salary and benefits from the big company. This had been going on for two years when I left the company.
My manager and my skip level manager both seemed quite aware of what was happening. But this guy was in another division of the company, so they didn't think it was their problem to solve.
The lesson... for a big enough company, you can be just as invisible in the office as you are at home, but the office gives better plausible deniability.
Initially he sat at his desk all day reading newspapers and books, ready to do any work he was asked to do. Eventually he got bored and started up his own one-man business that he operated from the office. All the while he continued collecting a salary and benefits from the big company. This had been going on for two years when I left the company.
My manager and my skip level manager both seemed quite aware of what was happening. But this guy was in another division of the company, so they didn't think it was their problem to solve.
The lesson... for a big enough company, you can be just as invisible in the office as you are at home, but the office gives better plausible deniability.