A former work friend and I had a colleague like this - named "Steven." We called it "pulling a Steven."
It was a large corporation and we could not figure out what the guy did. He had some dotted-line reports to people elsewhere, but never figured out who watched or evaluated him.
He was always attending conferences and meetings, you'd see his (usually bland) opinions on emails, he was always well-dressed, and he would flit in-and-out of the offices. He didn't have customers that we knew of, he didn't work in operations or implementation as far as we could tell. He was always on various "work teams," but If he disappeared immediately, it would affect no one else's job whatsoever.
Sounds like our politicians.
“ He was always attending conferences and meetings, you’d see his (usually bland) opinions on emails, he was always well-dressed, and he would flit in-and-out of the offices. He didn’t have customers that we knew of, he didn’t work in operations or implementation as far as we could tell. He was always on various “work teams,” but If he disappeared immediately, it would affect no one else’s job whatsoever. ”
That was a real life Kramer…