The Collapse of Care
How Good Intentions Get Refactored Away
Miguel thought talent and care would be enough. Raised to believe honesty, diligence, and modest ambition could build a decent life, he enters the software industry full of hope. But when he’s assigned to the most prestigious team of the department, the illusion cracks.
Mistakes aren’t forgiven but punished. Managers stay silent. Teammates adapt by cutting corners, dodging responsibility, and perfecting invisibility. What Miguel once believed were virtues—care, honesty —become liabilities in a system rewarding perception over progress.
As pressure mounts, Miguel experiments with disengagement: ghost commits, quiet avoidance, hiding in plain sight. He watches colleagues burn out, promises evaporate, and motivation drain away. Yet beneath the cynicism, he still clings to one question: is it possible to care without being crushed?
The Collapse of Care is a novel about disillusionment in modern tech—a story for anyone who has wondered why doing the right thing can feel like the wrong move.
The author is letting you choose the price you pay for this book!
Miguel thought talent and care would be enough. Raised to believe honesty, diligence, and modest ambition could build a decent life, he enters the software industry full of hope. But when he’s assigned to the most prestigious team of the department, the illusion cracks.
Mistakes aren’t forgiven but punished. Managers stay silent. Teammates adapt by cutting corners, dodging responsibility, and perfecting invisibility. What Miguel once believed were virtues—care, honesty —become liabilities in a system rewarding perception over progress.
As pressure mounts, Miguel experiments with disengagement: ghost commits, quiet avoidance, hiding in plain sight. He watches colleagues burn out, promises evaporate, and motivation drain away. Yet beneath the cynicism, he still clings to one question: is it possible to care without being crushed?
The Collapse of Care is a novel about disillusionment in modern tech—a story for anyone who has wondered why doing the right thing can feel like the wrong move.
PDF
EPUB
WEB
About
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.
Price
Pick Your Price...
Minimum price
$7.99
$12.99
You pay
$12.99Author earns
$10.39Author
About the Author
Sandor Dargo
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.
Contents
Table of Contents
The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.
You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!
So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?
See full terms...
Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase
We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned over $14 million writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Write and Publish on Leanpub
You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.
Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.