Coding abilities are not required for this marketer, rather a understanding of coding capabilities that a programmer can be hired for.
It's still a silly title because it's really just a marketing professional that specializes in online marketing, SEO, and tactics relating to the interwebs. This term has been around for 3+ years since I've heard of it.
I agree, the term is rather silly. But albeit small, there is a difference! Quoting a comment on an article in TheNextWeb . "It's more about putting on a lot of hats, knowing what tools to use when, creating a killer user experience, being a coder, being a designer, being data driven, and optimising & tweaking your product endlessly". Although that description isn't necessarily what a growth hacker is right now, it is what one should be.
Something that in the future could have value, but in it's current state, it is a bit like talking about 'white hat SEO'.
By saying that you're saying that you realise its potential value, but would shit on it in the present?
Growth Hacking is the unspoken seal of approval put on a lot of stuff like spamming by the venture/startup crowd.
What airbnb did with craigslist is they spammed the shit out of it via an API hack that has since been fixed. It is something I imagine a lot of airheads have done around here but instead of pushing bizopp offers airbnb decided to build a billion dollar business off of it.
Sometimes growth hacking is just marketing without morality, but since everyone here already does this it is just the term "marketer" 'round these parts.
In the startup scene where resources are thin, a marketer with coding skills is desired so they can implement shit on their own without having to pull off the product devs from what they're making. This is probably the thinking behind slapping on the word "hacker".
Well, what airbnb did could be put in a grey area. Here is an interesting discussion on that where Sean Ellis says "information is only spam when it is not contextually relevant to the medium and breaks the normal behavior of the medium".
I wouldn't say that growth hackers don't have a sense of morality. I think that the idea behind the hacker word relates to -> Hacking refers to any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty method that increases productivity and efficiency.