It definitly exists, some managers just want increasing headcount to have more worth among their peers. My friend has one such job, he's begging for work. His colleagues could easily handle how workload

That doesn't sound like a job where you also grow...at all...

On a visa too

> Why would someone pay you “to chill”?

Since you asked,

there’s a series of scenes in Silicon Valley where people are hired and just put on ice just to keep them from advancing competition.

This reflects reality.

Not post 2022 if you haven’t checked.

And even then, those companies weren’t looking to hire up all of the random enterprise CRUD full stack developers.

I put myself in that category. If you take away my AWS account, I’m just a senior enterprise Dev who knows how to talk to people.

> I’m just a senior enterprise Dev who knows how to talk to people.

Lots of devs don’t even know how to talk to their colleagues or spouse, let alone an arbitrary person for business development.

Engineers are definitely considered chess board pieces in the AI debt wars.