How being an Investigative Journalist is saving my Engineering Job

Embracing your inner bloodhound

"There's no work coming in."

The sentence rattled my brain. The notes were from a meeting I missed while on work travel.

"What do you mean there's no work", I said to myself.

I scanned the meeting minutes and found the same answer. There's no work coming in. No work coming means my coworkers and I are about to lose our jobs.

I opened YouTube and put on the Spotlight (2015) soundtrack and flipped on my Ida Tarbell investigative journalist AlterEgo and began the hunt.

Over the span of 5 days, I dug through the meeting notes, talked with multiple colleagues and higher ups, and sifted through recordings and documents trying to understand the scope of the problem.

It was worse than I thought.

When an Engineer becomes an Investigative Journalist:

My first step was hunting down the validity of the statements made in the meeting minutes.

I asked my co-workers who attended and drafted questions for my boss for clarification. They had similar impressions as I did. The meeting was a good start but didn't really answer their concerns.

The official notes were vague, so I asked colleagues for their notes.

Which revealed a deeper story surrounding forces outside of our control and the nature of the R&D industry. Despite having skilled people, the work arrives through contracts. We don't get our work handed to us by higher-ups, we need to find the work.

"No work coming in' means we're not getting contracts...how do we get work?"

I hunted through more documents. In the past, contracts were earned through proposals or white papers. We wrote them to showcase expertise, but most engineers aren't writers by choice.

Luckily, I love writing.

Proposals and white papers are the lifeblood of R&D. If I can't show why exploring an area or why my skills are beneficial, then I won't earn any contracts. Similar to copywriting and storytelling, persuasion tactics are universal, they have different names.

I need to learn how to draft white papers and proposals.

But none of my colleagues have written one before. We're new college grads. Writing wasn't discussed in university apart from lab reports let alone white papers.

Hopefully the higher-ups know more.

They've written proposals before, but they don't have the time to teach me. Years ago, there were proposal writing classes, but they don't happen anymore. I was sent recordings and some documents where they teach the basics.

But reading about writing isn't the same as writing.

I read a proposal writing book and the advice was similar to storytelling and copywriting: hook your reader, don't use jargon they wouldn't understand, be clear and concise. There were minute differences but if you understand story structure, you understand the general structure of what goes into white papers and proposals.

The essence of any white paper or proposal is to convince the other person you would be able to finish the project within the strategy outlined in the paper. The books and recordings were useful, but I needed an actual strategy. I needed examples to learn from and detailed breakdowns.

By the end of the week, I got a hold of the holy grail of white paper writing.

Understanding Investigative Journalism

Not just the profession but their process. The goal for any journalist worth their salt is to document the truth. The journey I went through finding out why I was about to be out of work and how I changed the situation was similar to investigative journalism.

Research a question, conduct interviews, connect the dots, verify information, repeat.

Their process gave me a structured way to sift through the noise and follow threads. Journalists often walk in the dark tugging on thin threads hoping it lights up the room. The movie Spotlight (2015) shows how impactful local investigative journalism is as it follows the Boston Globe Journalists who uncover the child abuse in the Catholic church.

The movie doesn't vilify the church, nor does it hold up the journalists on a pedestal, instead it focuses on the drudgery and tedium of good journalism.

Learning the principles behind journalism is like turning into a bloodhound.

I've got a nose for not only stories, but also when there's a gap in the threads where a piece of information is hidden or unknown. It's helped me be a better engineer by giving a structured process to breaking down any problem I don't understand.

I've used the same process over 8 years to finish projects, learn skills, and build a nonprofit.

These skills are useful for any field.