It's worth pointing out that shelved changes don't have any history though, so cross your fingers to make sure you don't accidentally delete/overwrite something.

Fwiw the only major issue I've had with branching is the fact its a full fat copy of your source which can end up taking up a load of space depending on how large your application is post build and how many binaries you dump into perforce.

They seem to be pushing towards "streams" now, but I've heard they make it easier to create development branches but haven't worked with them to find out.

Yes, I remember using "shelves" a lot. The branch was created for a major refactor of the code base, and the team I was on moved to that branch. Not sure what happened to it. I hated that company and left after a few months.

I wonder if it’s a workplace I worked at. We ended up having a bunch of generic branch names (one org had colors, another had star-related things), and when a project was done, they just used that branch for something else.

Nah, shelves have no history. They're more like a patch. P4 streams are the closest to git branches.