Somehow this term manages to debase both the terms hacker and marketer. Marketing people need to keep up with marketing trends which in a tech startup environment means you now need to have technical knowledge to do this. Good marketers have always used metrics where they're available, and to call them 'growth hackers' implies that marketers don't know how to use metrics or that they're marketers who 'kludge stuff together to make it work'.
It debases hackers because what they're doing isn't really hacking per se, what they're doing is their job using tools in the way they were designed to be used (e.g. a/b tests etc.).
To me, this is like the way that words like geek and nerd have been hijacked by hipsters. It seems that someone somewhere thought the term 'hacker' was cool and decided to add growth to imply they're responsible for growth (which in many ways, neither marketers nor hackers are).
The term "growth hacker" may be debatable, and the examples used in this blog post don't do it justice, but the spirit is right. People like Andy Johns (user growth at Facebook, then Twitter, then Quora) mix marketing with technical chops and actual product development.
When thinking through and building acquisition and engagement paths, having technical chops helps you connect the dots in ways a traditional marketer would never dream--but there's still a place for both types of people.
It debases hackers because what they're doing isn't really hacking per se, what they're doing is their job using tools in the way they were designed to be used (e.g. a/b tests etc.).
To me, this is like the way that words like geek and nerd have been hijacked by hipsters. It seems that someone somewhere thought the term 'hacker' was cool and decided to add growth to imply they're responsible for growth (which in many ways, neither marketers nor hackers are).