I'm sorry, what? I run an agency (still figuring the space out), but just so I get that part: They asked a junior to "find a project" from a spreadsheet?

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.

Benching is very common in any firm like Accenture, yea.

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)

My experience was 25 years ago, but back then we analysts and consultants were making around 50-60K and they were charging clients 5-15 times that when we were staffed. So I'm sure having a good buffer of people waiting and ready to go was well worth it.

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.

You can't do that in most projects without breaking security guidelines.

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.