Having worked with amazing HCI experts over the years, you've hit the nail on the head. It's wild how much design is done for designs sake at my work, with nary a nod to HCI given. The a11y team try to patch over it as best as possible, but we end up with a mess, and I'm treated like a pariah for pushing back on some of it
I'm glad to hear my suspicions and impressions are accurate. I have a number of friends who have gone into UI over the past 20 years and while they're all very smart people, In my opinion exactly 1 of them has what it takes to work in UI/UX. The rest are mediocre graphic designers with average to no training in graphic design, and zero experience in anything technical. Only one knew what Fitts law was, or what HCI meant, or what GUI meant
