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About the Book
About the Book
The Collapse of Care is a modern workplace novel about what happens when good intentions meet broken systems.
Miguel is young, bright, and earnest—a junior software engineer who believes that talent and care are enough to build a decent, fulfilling career. He grew up with the modest dream of being dependable, honest, and safe from extremes. Not rich. Not famous. Just steady.
But the tech industry doesn’t play by those rules.
Assigned to a prestigious team, Miguel quickly learns that prestige is a mirage. Managers stay silent, Product Owners punish mistakes, and teammates adapt by cutting corners, hiding effort, and playing politics. Care and honesty aren’t rewarded—they’re liabilities.
As Miguel struggles to adapt, his idealism collapses. He experiments with disengagement, learns the politics of invisibility, and watches his modest dream erode into burnout and ghost commits. Yet beneath the cynicism, he still searches for meaning—for a way to code, to live, and to care without being crushed by the system.
This is not a story of meteoric success or triumphant disruption. It’s the quieter, more common story of survival, disillusionment, and the hard-earned wisdom to move on.
The Collapse of Care is for anyone who has ever sat in a stand-up wondering if they still care, for every developer who thought hard work and honesty would be enough, and for anyone who has felt the weight of being average in a world that doesn’t value it.
About the Author
I am a C++ software craftsman with strong Python working in the tourism and hospitality industry and an enthusiastic blogger writing about coding, books, and the importance of stoic philosophy in a software developer's life.
I moved to software development from database operations which means that I don't just care about delivering a product as fast as possible, but I do understand the importance of stability and maintainability.
I'm passionate about delivering clean solutions, but I find even more important to help my teams to constantly raise the bar and to (re)focus on quality and clean code. I do this by explaining how high-quality work will help them in their individual careers, by introducing more meaningful development processes and automation and by teaching them industry best practices.