I'm a hybrid designer/developer, but I socialize with more developers than designers—at conferences, online, etc. I have a very specific form of impostor syndrome. I think it might be instructive when examining impostor syndrome, in the same way that optical illusions can be instructive when examining the workings of perception.

I am not a rockstar designer. Or, for that matter, developer. Or anything, really. I am talented, and I feel that I could be a badass at something. Looking around me at tech conferences and our erstwhile online communities, I think this is a feeling that a lot of us share. We're all looking for that outlet, that thing that we would be a game-changer at doing. In our heads, we fantasize about being some kind of Michael Jordan of X, or maybe something with less glamor. A savant-like rain-man at content marketing, or scalable API design, or documentation, or low-latency concurrent network development, or whatever it is that we think we like doing.

As a designer at developer conferences, I am sometimes treated like some kind of visiting dignitary. Holy shit, you're a designer, but you can talk about Python in complete sentences? Well lookit that. You must be a really badass designer. And we'll forgive your shitty code, because zomg, you're a designer too!

Cross-field impostor syndrome is the worst because I feel like I've pulled a fast one on everybody. They barely have the tools to evaluate this whole other field. I keep waiting for some designer to stand up during one of my talks and say "Um, quite frankly, all of this bullshit is nothing more than your opinion."

What's more, I often feel like I was given the stage by accident. PyCon is a conference full of some astoundingly smart people. I love watching people get up in front of others and talk about the shit they love. It's a trial by fire; it makes them better. So few are even given the opportunity. Am I doing my opportunity justice? Or did they waste a slot on me simply because I come from foreign fields and make pretty slide decks to illustrate my points?

I know, objectively, that there are not a lot of people who generalize over their career like I do. It doesn't change how I feel. I still look back on my years in open source and I feel unworthy of any kind of praise. I barely write code. I barely maintain my projects. If I deserve recognition in something, it is in talking some talk and getting other people excited enough to keep going after my attention span has evaporated.

Impostor syndrome has a lot of sides. This is mine.