It's a real shame that people bought into this false dichotomy, because the base reality is that people who work in web dev that stubbornly pick either code or layout are more of a liability than an asset.

I don't believe that people who can design and code are as rare as folks seem to believe, either. What seems more likely is that there are a LOT of coders who are extremely fluent in CSS but aren't particularly gifted when it comes to making things look good.

It wasn't that long ago that designers understood that they couldn't just hand off a 2D comp of what they want to see. The job isn't done until the output can be integrated into the app. Nobody gets to launch cows over the wall and go for lunch.