[notacoward]

At many medium-to-large companies, being the CTO or in the office of the CTO fits this bill. I've worked with many such people who were brilliant and/or hardworking, but I've also worked with many who just liked to fiddle with stuff and either throw it over the fence (where it inevitably had to be rewritten) or just never finish it. Generally "staff" (as opposed to "line") positions are a bit like this, because you can basically ride on one person's power/reputation and you only have to please them. A lot of "architects" also have responsibilities so vague that it's hard to say whether or not they're doing their jobs.

Mostly, though, it's less a matter of the position than of strategies you can use in any position. A perennial favorite trick seems to be working on multiple projects reporting in to bosses who never talk to one another. I've seen people perfect the trick of telling each boss that they're working on stuff for the other, until both essentially give up. At a company where reorgs are frequent so that many people nominally report to managers who have no oversight of their actual work, you can even get people who literally appear nowhere on the org chart but still get paid. It sounds like a joke or a movie plot, but it's true. I've seen it. I have to admit I've been tempted to "fall between the cracks" myself, but I'm just not that kind of guy.

[JonFish85]

As a CTO, I imagine you're legally responsible for all sorts of stuff. Having your name on corporate documents and such, there is all sorts of responsibility for things!

[notacoward]

That's likely to be more true at startups than at mid-to-large companies. There, the CTO is often further from the center of power and responsibility. It's even possible to have a CTO who is not an "officer" of the company in a legal sense.