This is perfect!

I too am not a SWE. This confuses a lot of SWEs, recruiters, interviewers, etc.

My domain used to have a name, but that name got changed to something that has the word AI in it. And I don't really identify with that either, although I use parts of that.

Hacker (in the HN sense, obviously) actually captures fairly perfectly how I approach using computers/tech.

Good piece for those with such an identity crisis to re-find the word for it.

I love it! I had this convo with many people before, I consider myself a hacker too, not the Hollywood cliche, but the concept of hacking things and repurposing them to do another goal or a new one. I get bored quickly doing the same thing over and over so sitting and writing code is a soul crushing task, rather, I have a goal to do something and in the process I learn all the new exciting stuff while building it, of course, you have to be a quick learn and adaptable to do that. It’s perfect except when it comes to get a job, most companies still follow the traditional concept of you being a cog in a machine, and whatever you are doing will be used in our work, they don’t look at the attributes you have but rather how many X years in writing Z language or FPGA design.