
Developers Are People, Too: My Five Year Path To Personal Growth
Written by: Everett Zufelt
My name is Everett Zufelt, and I am Director of Technology Services at Myplanet. I joined Myplanet when it was a small startup in 2012 as a contract developer, and have experienced the trials and tribulations of early-stage growth over the past five and a half years. Since starting at Myplanet, the company has grown and changed in a number of ways, but its core values have remained the same. And those values have shaped me into the developer and team leader I am today.
As the years have passed, I’ve moved into a more leadership-oriented and mentorship-heavy role at the company. My duties now include working one-on-one with team members to help them achieve their personal and career goals, providing mentorship and insight into both their “hard”, technical skills and their “soft”, interpersonal skills. Many of the concerns and frustrations I hear from team members are the same ones I myself felt when I first started out.
Having faced down many of those concerns, I realized it might be helpful to share some of my experiences with the broader development community, in hopes of giving others a glimpse into the life-changing[1] growth opportunities that are available when you work at a place like Myplanet.
What did I get myself into?
When I started at Myplanet, I felt overwhelmed: I was being introduced to tools and patterns I hadn’t used before, I was working remotely, and although I was met with a culture of open communication, I was honestly concerned that I was not going to last long.
Fortunately, what I found in those initial weeks was a welcoming culture, and team members who, despite barely knowing me, were willing to set aside their tasks to help me get up to speed. (I’ve since heard from many peers in the industry that it’s common to feel somewhat out of one’s depth at first, but at the time, I didn’t know that.)
But even though I told myself stories about not being capable enough for the role, and impostor syndrome[2] was definitely present in my thoughts, my team never made me feel I was at fault as I was learning the new processes, tools, and practices. Even more remarkable to me, they remained committed to supporting me with getting on-board to Myplanet’s practices.

It wasn’t long before I shifted from contractor to full-time, full-fledged Myplaneteer. Shortly after joining the team, I relocated to be closer to the action. It was also around this time that I began, quite skeptically I might add, to participate in several of the in-office personal development practices.
Myplanet has always had, since its very earliest days when as an office of a dozen or so people, maintained available-to-all mindfulness practices and self-development coaching. It may not be so uncommon now in the tech world, but nearly a decade ago when the company was founded, this was a fairly radical offer. And it’s one of the key reasons I have been able to succeed in the way I have.
As I look back at my early Myplanet days, I know that I was a far more difficult person to engage with. I didn’t really know how to listen to others, and I didn’t know how to convince others that I was right. (I was told by a founder early on that I was almost always right about things, but that nobody wanted to hear it. In having worked with and spoken with many technologists[3] over the years, I am certain that this was not a problem I alone faced.) It turns out that for a member of an agile software studio, that being right is far less important than being relatable.
A hard truth
I didn’t come to these realizations about my character and behaviour easily, over the span of many years with the benefit of gentle periods of reflection. No, I remember quite clearly the day that I was confronted directly with this truth about myself, even though I’m certain in retrospect that it was cultivated over many months.
One of my coaches asked me, in a meeting much like the ones I now serve as coach in for my teammates, “What’s more important, being right, or being productive?” I didn’t have an answer — or rather, my answer was a struggle, because I believed that they could only be one in the same.
What’s more important, being right, or being productive? Who knew such a simple question could knock me on my back like that? It was the first push towards a journey in self-development that continues to this day. The next push, unfortunately for me, would be no less gentle.
During this time our teams were experimenting with all of the “fun” team building practices that you’ll find in many books[4] and blogs. But the one that stands out to me was the sharing of our Myers-Briggs personality profiles on our team, in an effort to build empathy for one another.
I fit rather neatly into the ESTJ category, which I’m quite comfortable with now, though when I first read the description, I was once again knocked flat on my back. The general summary is as follows:
ESTJs are practical, realistic, and matter-of-fact, with a natural head for business or mechanics. Though they are not interested in subjects they see no use for, they can apply themselves when necessary… ESTJs make good administrators, especially if they remember to consider others’ feelings and points of view, which they often dismiss.[5]
Although the exercise was a disarming event, and we did get closer as a team, it was more profound for me in what it revealed to me about myself and how I was being perceived by my peers. It was like someone followed me around for 10 years, and wrote down exactly what I was like. Suffice it to say, it was a jarring experience.
Change wasn’t inevitable, but it was necessary
For me, it was just the kind of jarring I needed. I could have left things where they were, and continued on being “right” and unrelatable. But I had a drive to achieve more, in both my career and personally, and I grew convinced that something needed to change within me to get me where I wanted to be. I didn’t know what exactly it was, so I did what comes naturally to me: I started learning and exploring, experimenting with ideas and concepts just as I would with my technical work.
I started my journey with The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which summarized the problem perfectly. The author explains that lack of trust, and a need for greater vulnerability, is at the root of team dysfunctions.

This isn’t meant to be a story of individual achievement and triumph, and I don’t want anyone to mistake growth as being easy. In fact, I’m confident that the opposite is true. Without having joined a community that believes in a growth mindset, and that provides the support and tools necessary for personal growth, I likely would not have started the journey in the first place, and if I did, I certainly would not have made it all that far. Myplanet’s culture, its inclination to support and foster an environment that allows staff to grow and work on personal development, was pivotal to my successes so far in this area.
I continued to work regularly with one of our coaches, specifically around the types of mindfulness practices taught by the Search Inside Yourself program. And I continued to read many books[6], each of which provided a different, yet usually compatible, perspective on the problem. Moreover, they offered me new tools to help me grow.
There is no end to the journey
I’ve achieved significant growth over the past five years, and have experienced a change in how I approach my team, work, and customers, that I wasn’t certain could be possible. I’m told by many who have travelled with me through this journey that they’ve seen a change in how I communicate, and more importantly, how they believe that I perceive their value. That alone is enormously gratifying.
I am not done, however. I believe that the vulnerability required to grow in this way can only be uncovered in gradual layers. As of the time that I’m writing this article, I’m reading Rising Strong and realizing that this journey never ends. The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall… Struggle, Brené Brown writes, can be our greatest call to courage and rising strong our clearest path to deeper meaning, wisdom, and hope.[7]
Over the course of the past five years my technical proficiencies have continued to grow. I’m a technologist at heart, I love to explore, to learn, and to create things with technology. I feel good about my technical achievements, and have been fortunate that during my time at Myplanet I’ve had the opportunity to work with customers and partners around the world. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak at many global events, including DrupalCon Munich, Portland, Baltimore and later this fall, Vienna.
No matter how proud I am of technical achievements, the experience of personal transformation, a new way of seeing myself and others, is the most meaningful experience that my five years have provided. And as proof, I offer this: I’m excited for the opportunities that await our team as we continue to learn and grow together, which is something I would never have said five and a half years ago.
[1] Anyone who knows me will attest that I am not overly optimistic. I truly believe that those who are driven to achieve significant and meaningful growth will find it at Myplanet.
[2] I’m not just too cool to take off my sunglasses for a bio shot, I’m completely blind. I think that for persons toward whom the technology industry has typically been unwelcoming, impostor syndrome is more easily experienced.
[3] I’m not beating up on technologists here, but share this perspective as it is the one with which I am most familiar.
[4] There are many such resources, the one I recall using as a team was Overcoming The Five Dysfunctions: A Field Guide
[5] Emphasis added, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESTJ
[6] I’ve read many great books on the topic of personal growth. Along with those in this article, three other great reads are: Difficult Conversations, Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton,Doug & Sheila Heen; Leadership and Self-deception, The Arbinger Institute; and The Book of Joy, Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, & Douglas Carlton Abrams.
[7] Publisher’s summary, https://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/Rising-Strong-Audiobook/B00VSEM9QK/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srImg?qid=1502462675&sr=1-1
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