You need to go to edit the project
then go to the very right top corner where there is a little person icon and click "add followers"
this is how to add employees to a project that has limited access.
It doesn't make any sense, it's not intuitive, it's a very good short description of how things on Odoo sometimes are extremely unintiuitive, redundant and don't make any sense.
I still don't understand what is the collaborators tab
in the project settings,
"Visibility -> Invited employees"
In reality
"Followers -> Add Followers"
Keep terminology consistent in order to make sense and not make people waste tons of time trying to figure something simple out :$