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A Hacker in general terms is not necessarily derogatory when it refers to an individual who uses computer, networking or other skills to overcome a technical problems.

A Hacker is also a way to refer to anyone who uses their “hacking” abilities to gain unauthorized access to systems or networks in order to commit crimes or engage in unethical behavior. Examples of this type of Hacker are:

• The theft of information to hurt people via identity theft
• The ability to can power or recognition by bringing down a portion of a system, the system or the network
• The Desire to collect a ransom by holding a company or government hostage

Historically, Hacker was first used in the 1960s to describe a programmer or an individual who, in an era of highly constrained computer resources, could increase the efficiency of computer code in a way that removed, or hacked, excess machine code instructions from a program.

Source: https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/hacker