When I worked for Accenture, I got benched for an entire summer. It was great. At the time the only resource to find a new project was this spreadsheet uploaded to Sharepoint, and there was 0 pressure from my HR rep to actually look for a new role.
I eventually found a new job and quit, but I always wondered what would have happened if I just stayed on the bench while working at the 2nd job.
But the bench also provided great opportunities to do actual good trainings, certifications and upskilling of all kinds. But the company stopped investing into its future long ago. It's just about short term gains for those on top.
I've always found this part to be so crazy. It's seems like both a politically bad idea to not dogfood your own stuff and just also a bad business sense to not get "free" testers using the products.
Like, if you're buying a car and you ask the salesman which of these Subaru's they'd be and they respond with I'd go elsewhere and buy a Ford. Why would you buy one of their cars?
2009
> But the bench also provided great opportunities to do actual good trainings, certifications and upskilling of all kinds.
I did spend some of the time studying new developer skills. But on my own, Accenture didn't have any learning resources for that all they had was all management training stuff.
Don't they pair juniors up with seniors in existing projects? Before I'd "bench" anyone, I'd do that without charging for them, so they learn and can do realised billable hours later down the line. I'd feel so weird getting benched. I didn't know that was a thing anyone did frankly.
It does seem weird from the outside I agree. It can also depend on the person, skillset, etc. Some people will never get benched just because they don't have any or enough other people with equivalent skills, so there's constant demand.
(edit: skillset, not skillet, obviously your bench rate does not depend on your cookware)
Even during the dotcom crash, they didn't lay anyone off IIRC. Instead they offered up to a couple years unpaid leave with benefits and guarantees of a job afterwards.
I figured, they couldn't sign a contract without having people ready to staff it. I met a ton of people who were hired onto the bench and sat for months either without a project (just because they had skills that would be needed for future projects), or they had a project but were waiting for the project to start.
I say second to delivering a good project: My job was application support. Half of my team was offshore, and they had very little actual technical skill, they just learned the problems that may occur with the software we supported. But they couldn't go off script and debug problems that we didn't already know how to solve.
There are contracts signed and NDAs for everyone that has access to customer systems.
Although I also do conceed many offshoring companies forget about that, until someone that wasn't supposed to exist on the project does something that ends up on an escalation.
It is very common in consulting and agencies, when not getting enough projects.