To me, the "hacker" distinction is not about novelty, but understanding.

Bashing kludgy things together until they work was always part of the job, but that wasn't the motivational payoff. Even if the result was crappy, knowing why it was crappy and how it could've been better was key.

LLMs promise an unremitting drudgery of the "mess around until it works" part, facing problems that don't really have a cause (except in a stochastic sense) and which can't be reliably fixed and prevented going forward.

The social/managerial stuff that may emerge around "good enough" and velocity is a whole 'nother layer.