I was thinking the same thing. The word that I would be more inclined to use is used multiple times throughout the article. Discovery.

Agreed. A better framing would be "defining work".

I thought this was going to be an article about slacking off with style

I think it's a fundamental difference in philosophy. Does the work exist, and you discover it? Or does it start existing as soon as you think about it? This person seems to subscribe to the latter world view.

In their defence, requirements engineering is somehow reactive sounding to me, while "this thing" is kind of "proactive".

yeah I thought the post was going to be satirical

Requirements engineering still applies to senior engineers. You are given a problem and you need to work out the requirements and the path to completion.

But for staff engineers, they need to to discover the scope themselves. That's where "inventing" coming from. Not saying inventing is a good word here, but requirement alone is not enough for staff level's work