I recently came upon the following two rather odd job postings online. They start off saying they are looking for UX (User eXperience) designers, but the roles and responsibilities seem to indicate they are actually looking for programmers.

Now we know that a lot of job ads seem to advertise for fantastically unrealistic ideals (much like online dating profiles?) but this is surely getting a tad ridiculous?

…[seeking] a passionate and skilled UI/UX designer [who is also a] web developer with good designer skills

Your knowledge of UI/UX design methodologies and techniques and a strong portfolio of examples of your designs for web / mobile applications plus experience as developer with Windows/ASP.NET … HTML5 / CSS3 / JavaScript / Jquery / Responsive Design / Bootstrap … with an obsession to design interfaces that … [are]… exciting, simple and intuitive

…seeking a UX/ UI designer

The role will entail:
Working as part of a product team to improve the overall customer experience.
Researching, planning and implementing front and back end solutions.
Back end development of a website to cater for large numbers of users.
Ensure solutions cater to support mass numbers of users…
Testing of your own code.

If they were looking for a programmer, why not say so? This lack of precision in communications really doesn’t help anyone.

Great programmers who are also great designers are likely to be extremely rare. I certainly have not met any programmers who are overly keen to run workshops or conduct interviews with users and project stakeholders. Nor have I met designers (whether strategic or executional) who love Visual Studio as much as they do Adobe’s products.

Is "user experience" such a buzz phrase now we must use in in every possible place? And hence rendering it meaningless?