At least two times in my career I've (almost solo) worked on pet projects of a CTO or similar that were assigned almost no other resources and weren't really al

At least two times in my career I've (almost solo) worked on pet projects of a CTO or similar that were assigned almost no other resources and weren't really aligned with other stakeholders. It was usually fun while it lasted but then inevitably it would just be scrapped. Also, one time my team hired a freelancer but in order to justify him to upper management we had to invent some extra project to implement. It turned out to be all in vain anyway, since the whole team was let go one year later.