A hacker gets things done. An engineer enumerates the pros and cons of various solutions and picks one.
The work you do will rarely be complicated or sexy, in the CS/theoretical sense. But it will be put up against a lot of non-technical forces like time, budget, politics, etc. Being an engineer is about navigating this imperfect space. A hacker will come up with one solution, but an engineer will come up with many.
You're multiplying the solution space by a certain amount of non-technical dimensions and accounting for the difference. That ability will come in time. You will find out that technical correctness isn't always the #1 priority.