Anecdotally, I've heard multiple stories of companies hiring staff, but not having any useful work to fill their time. Cases like product managers being hired but not assigned to any actual products, or engineers hired to infrastructure teams before the company has decided what infrastructure it wants. Although, these anecdotes are mostly from startups trying to scale and grow, not from FAANG-tier companies.
I have been in one such companies. The investors asked for larger headcount, and the company complied. With the pandemic, there were some layoffs, and then big chunk of engineering left out of their own volition, since there wasn't nearly enough work for 450 engineers to do that wasn't accomplished with 100 a couple years before.
