There are many people, such as the OP probably, who take pride in the engineering aspect of what they do. It's my understanding that the term "hacker" as used o

There are many people, such as the OP probably, who take pride in the engineering aspect of what they do. It's my understanding that the term "hacker" as used on HN actually does not include this. Also, not everybody is working on a startup. Most programmers actually work in the "put money into deeper, lower-level engineering" phase of software development, and it's important that companies have a stream of good engineers to hire.