I think these are simply two different jobs that have a lot of overlap and unfortunately share the same base-name of “programmer”. Consider the long haul trucker vs the Hollywood stunt driver. Both jobs involve driving a vehicle, and as a employer, sometimes I need one style of driving, and sometimes I need another.

The signal I’m inferring when a job posting asks for the Hacker/Ninja/Wizard style is they want someone who can get something up and running extremely quickly, who focuses more on delighting the user than on making the backend code more maintainable, and who can half-ass all the other technology roles (SEO, graphic design, copy writing, etc.)

And there exists work environments where this style makes sense; namely, startups where the total employee count is in the single digits and so everybody has to half-ass all roles, and where we’re not even sure if the company is going to be around in 6 months, so for heaven’s sake, do NOT spend effort making the code more maintainable if that investment is only going to pay off a year from now, etc.

And then, of course, there are the work environments where this style doesn’t make sense. If I own a company that employs ten thousand people, I do not want my programmers half-assing the graphic design. We have graphic designers on staff. We pay them less than we pay our programmers. A programmer who’s doing graphic design instead of programming is wasting my money. And if he’s doing a shitty job at it to boot? And if I fully expect my company to be around 3, 5, 10, etc. years from now, then yes, please design the software so as to be as cost efficient as possible on those time scales.

I too self-identify as a “boring programmer”. I tried the hacker/ninja/wizard lifestyle and it just wasn’t for me. But I absolutely do not begrudge people posting job listings asking for a hacker/ninja/wizard: they’re honestly communicating what they’re looking for, and I think it’s admirable that they are being upfront about it.