I feel your pain. Job expectations for front-end work (and, no doubt, other tech areas) have grown terribly incoherent. It seems like a lot of companies expect new hires to train themselves into unicorns on their current employer's time, when they could just hire someone now and give them a decent amount of time to ramp up instead.
I think for the needs of front end, the recruiting world would be better off targeting back end people heavy programmers, maybe .net or java and their migration to the front end frameworks will be much easier than the designers will be. It sounds awesome for a designer to pick up javascript and just run with it, but I personally see a pretty thick wall between focusing on design, graphics, presentation and then solving all the programming problems to go with it. Again personal experience, it's been easier for me to shut off the valve of code completely, so I'm not distracted by consequences of how it will be built. I know that sounds counter intuitive but just knowing some of the avid javascripters, those who can build apps with it, they don't really have the ability to get out of that mode to design something, they are always living the framework. They will make something nice, but alone their work rarely surpasses the level of beauty or refinement of a really good designer artist.
Yes I know those hybrids exist, but unfortunately there aren't nearly enough of them to fill all the positions. Not only that, but I'd argue that a lot of them who are hybrids, you're not going to get their best work from both areas if they are expected to deliver from both disciplines on projects. Not on the deadlines that employers will set at least.
And I suspect a similar problem exists in actual building architecture. Yeah some building designers are good at accomodating for all the variables of planning codes, but they aren't going to be (nearly as often) fantastic at aesthetics that somebody who works outside those constraints might be capable of. There's a lot of value in designing first, then put those styles of thinking together (designers and architects) separate people and from that point later in the process of creation you start solving the challenges like plumbing codes, metallurgy afterwards. Part of this is me complaining, but it's my attempt at experience of always being a crossover person and how you never really feel like you're honing a craft, you just feel like you're being left behind and not properly cultivating what you enjoy most.
The problem is anyone who identifies himself or herself as a backend person probably hates dealing with HTML & CSS. And that's without also getting into the backend devs who also despise Javascript. As far as I can tell anyone who is a backend dev only is saying "I don't want to deal with any of the bullshit on the front end." Good luck convincing those people the next technology they should learn is React or Angular or SCSS.
