[progbits]

But why keep them if they are going to be doing useless work? In the hopes they get bored and move internally to different project?

[xnx]

Sometimes having someone do useless work for you is better than having them do useful work for a competitors.

[uvdn7]

It’s not entirely useless. It costs big companies little to make this type of investments to avoid a potential big miss longer term (think of IBM, Nokia, etc.) Big companies are paranoid about missing the next big thing, so it makes sense to invest in a lot of things.