You're still a hacker. The parent comment is conflating engineers (by which I mean, like the kind of people who design bridges and critical infrastructure - not just the title given to anyone who can code) with hackers. Think of it this way. Almost all engineers are hackers, but the majority of hackers are not engineers.
Tons of hackers don't give a flying fuck about the "right way" to do something. Hackers are just the people who decide to apply their personal agency and creative talents towards building, altering, breaking and fixing things. There is no unifying motivation for doing so (though admittedly, curiosity is more common than money as a motivator), nor any standardized way of engaging in the process.
I pretty wholeheartedly agree with your 2nd paragraph.
Regarding your first, I have similar concerns about this gatekeeping of “engineers”. Civil engineers and the like have much more stringent regulations and much more weight put onto correctness, but they aren’t required to prize correctness-for-its-own-sake, or think of their work like art, or be doing the work for its own sake rather than money.
I’m pretty confident that attempting to ascribe a unified motive to any group is a mistake.
Tons of hackers don't give a flying fuck about the "right way" to do something. Hackers are just the people who decide to apply their personal agency and creative talents towards building, altering, breaking and fixing things. There is no unifying motivation for doing so (though admittedly, curiosity is more common than money as a motivator), nor any standardized way of engaging in the process.