Forest companies and desert companies. How to identify the companies you want to work for and the ones you don’t.

For years, in our industry, changing jobs was relatively straightforward.
Not in the sense of easy, but in the sense that the market had slack: there was a higher volume of openings, more churn, and if something didn’t quite fit, you could move on because your LinkedIn inbox was overflowing with messages from recruiters.

We’ve already accepted that we’re no longer in that situation. But there are many people who have been in their roles for years and are now considering a move, and they don’t quite understand the current market.

There are fewer openings, hiring processes are longer and the mental cost of job hunting has increased significantly. Not just because of the time investment, but also because of the energy drained by interviews, take-home assignments, follow-ups with recruiters who reached out and then disappeared and the less visible cost of frustration.

So, in a market like this, people think much more carefully. And the question that keeps coming up in technical communities is:
“Where is it actually worth going?”

This is where, through conversations, a kind of classification starts to emerge.

It’s increasingly common to hear people say things like:
“I have a list of companies I want to apply to and a list of companies I really don’t want to end up in.”

Right now, candidates, knowing that processes are longer and more demanding than before, place a lot of weight on what their next move will be. And mental categories start to appear as a form of self-protection: to avoid falling into the same kind of place again, to avoid repeating mistakes, to avoid burning out one more time.

Because now, when job changes aren’t so easy, choosing the wrong company can easily turn into a lost year.

Forest companies vs. desert companies: what they really are

To classify companies, we first need a simple mental framework.

In an email conversation, Edu Ferro shared a distinction that struck me as especially accurate: forest companies and desert companies.

Forest companies are environments where you generally know you’ll be able to work well.
Not because everything is perfect, but because, overall, the way of working and the context support you:

• There are good practices, or at least a genuine intention to have them.
• There’s enough organization for chaos not to be the default state.
• There’s a mindset focused on building product and delivering value, not just firefighting.
• There’s room to learn, improve, and grow.

A forest isn’t a ball pit where everyone lives happily ever after. But it is a place where you feel a sense of safety, order, and control in your work.

Desert companies, on the other hand, are the exact opposite.

They’re environments where everything takes more effort than it should:

• Good practices don’t exist or stay stuck at the theory level.
• Organization is weak or outright nonexistent.
• Short-term thinking always wins.
• Wear and tear is constant.

And the most dangerous part: not only do you fail to grow, you unlearn. You start lowering your standards without even realizing it, because “this is just how things are done here”.

I like to extend this concept beyond engineering culture. For me, it’s not just about pairing or tests. It’s about the entire organization.

A forest company is one that allows you to grow in every dimension: technical, professional, and human.
A desert company is one that drains and dries you out, even if it looks great from the outside.

How to spot forest companies and desert companies

Most companies don’t present themselves as deserts. They’re hard to detect from the outside because everything looks normal. The real issue appears when you see the gap between the narrative and the day-to-day reality.

To start forming your own view, here’s a tool Abraham Vallez once shared with us: create a tier list of companies. Decide which ones would be Tier S and which ones would fall into Tier E. Not all companies play in the same league, offer the same things, or demand the same level from you.

This is useful because it helps you understand:

• the kind of environment you’ll be working in
• what you can realistically expect from it
• and what it will cost you to be there

From here, there are several fairly consistent signals that help distinguish a forest from a desert. None of them are foolproof, but taken together, they usually paint a clear picture.

Signal 1: how day-to-day work actually happens

Beyond values, requirements, or tech stack, there’s a very simple question that often reveals a lot:
What does a normal workday look like in this company?

In forest companies, work tends to have a certain order. Not because there’s no pressure or problems, but because chaos isn’t the natural state. There’s planning, priorities are reasonably clear, and there’s usually room to do things properly most of the time.

In desert companies, everything is urgent.
There’s always a rush. There’s always something “more important”. Work is constantly about putting out fires that someone failed to prevent.

A key nuance here is product mindset within the development team.

In forest environments, development teams understand why they’re doing what they’re doing:

• They know the problem they’re solving.
• They understand the user.
• They participate, at least partially, in product decisions.

This doesn’t mean everyone has to be a Product Manager. It means development isn’t just a factory for opening and closing tickets.

In deserts, development usually works by command and control:

• Someone decides.
• Someone writes requirements.
• Someone executes.

Signal 2: how decisions are made

Another clear difference lies in how decisions are made, not so much who decides, but how and with what information.

In forest companies, decisions usually come with context:

• The why is explained.
• Objectives are shared.
• It’s clear what problem is being solved.

This doesn’t mean endless debate. It means people understand the framework they’re working within, which enables autonomy.

With that context, you can make better day-to-day decisions without asking permission for everything. Those micro-decisions make you faster and more confident.

In desert companies, decisions tend to arrive as orders, often without explanation, context, or coherence.

The result is a highly dependent environment, where permission is needed for everything.

Signal 3: mistakes, learning, and wear and tear

Few things define a company as clearly as its relationship with mistakes, because mistakes are inevitable.

In forest companies, when something goes wrong, the questions tend to be:

• What failed in the system?
• What can we learn from this?
• What should we change so it doesn’t happen again?

The focus is on the process, not the person. Mistakes are input for improvement, not excuses to assign blame.

In desert companies, mistakes are handled differently:

• People look for someone to blame.
• Fingers are pointed.
• Fear of making mistakes spreads.

When mistakes put you in the danger zone, people stop taking risks, stop proposing ideas, and start playing it safe. Exhaustion builds up fast.

This topic, closely tied to engineering culture, has come up in depth in conversations with Julio César Pérez and Emmanuel Valverde. They’re well worth listening to if you want to understand how environments shape how we work and learn.

• Conversation with Julio César Pérez: https://youtu.be/h3-QURUjdr8?si=vOF7JfMf4zjwVLAr 
• Conversation with Emmanuel Valverde: https://youtu.be/N3VtdjvM8u0?si=PiyGPAD2xiUrQlkY 

Signal 4: early warning signs that often go unnoticed

Some signals are subtle. Others show up before you even join, especially during the hiring process.

Common red flags include:

• Chaotic hiring processes
  Constant changes, duplicated interviews, take-home tasks no one reviews, endless silence. When hiring is chaotic, working there usually is too.
• Interviews where no one can clearly explain the role
  Different people tell you different things. It’s unclear what you’ll do, with whom, or why. A clear sign of internal misalignment.
• Vague promises
  Everything will be fixed “when we grow” or “after this phase”. The reality is that phase never ends.
• High turnover treated as normal
  High attrition is normalized when it usually points to a structural issue.

None of these signs alone condemns a company. But when several pile up, they’re a reliable indicator of the environment you’re walking into.

The invisible impact of a desert company

Working at a desert company isn’t always an immediate disaster. Often there are no obvious red flags. What happens is subtler and more dangerous You erode.

Over time:

• You lower your standards.
• You normalize chaos.
• You stop fighting certain battles because it’s not worth it.

And gradually, doubt creeps in. Doubt about your judgment. About your skills. About whether things really work differently elsewhere.

These environments don’t always cause obvious burnout. Sometimes they cause silent burnout: less excitement, less initiative, less ambition. You simply burn out.

That’s why the real problem isn’t just how bad it is to work there, but how you are when you leave. Recovering your standards, confidence, and energy often takes much longer than expected.

Why this matters to you

This isn’t just cultural reflection. It has very practical consequences.

For people looking for a job, identifying whether a company is forest or desert is a career skill. You develop it with time and mistakes.

Choosing wrong can mean:

• Slowing your growth.
• Losing confidence in your judgment.
• Having to undo decisions later.

Understanding that “this isn’t the place” can be just as important as a great salary.

For companies, the market classifies you too.

People talk, share experiences, and build collective reputations. When a company is perceived as a desert, attracting talent becomes difficult.

Climbing out of that category is much harder than falling into it. It takes time and real change.

In the end, culture isn’t what a company says it is. It’s what others say about it.

And in an increasingly tangled market, nobody wants to settle down in the desert.

Not all companies are cool

Some companies are cooler than others.
Some companies are cool.
And some companies are not cool at all. Zero.

Forest companies aren’t perfect.
Desert companies aren’t always malicious.

But being able to tell them apart gives you something extremely valuable: judgment.

And in a market where choosing wrong is expensive, good judgment is one of the best tools you can develop.