After graduating with a degree in Economics, I started applying for white-collar jobs at the age of 22. Like many new graduates, I received little to no feedback. To avoid being unemployed, I took a blue-collar job as a CNC operator through my brother, who was already working at a factory. They were clear: there was no open position at the time, but they planned to move to a larger facility and would need staff. I accepted, while being transparent from day one that I would continue pursuing white-collar opportunities if they came up.
I did my best to perform well, even though manual work was not my strongest skill. Eventually, I was contacted by another company for a white-collar role and invited for an interview. I informed HR at the factory honestly. They asked me to wait. About a year and a half later, I had a meeting with HR and the department manager I would be working with. We shook hands and agreed to move forward. I was told there would be a trial period, followed by a proper salary.
During that time, I didn t limit myself to my job description. I learned accounting tasks, supported the production department even though I was in logistics and planning, and spent time with maintenance and quality teams. I wanted to understand the whole system. Months passed, but the promises were delayed. When I asked, I was told it would be handled. Just before the new year, I raised the issue again. They made an exception and gave me a very small raise. When the annual raise came, it was applied on top of that low trial salary, which felt unfair. I communicated this calmly and respectfully, but nothing changed.
After a lot of late nights, I finally worked up the nerve to share my first real side project: BastionBridge.com
It s a very early (think v0.1 / rough-around-the-edges) web tool I built to help make sense of investing data in one place, especially for folks interested in options signals and longer-term stock evaluation.
We re getting close to launching Barie.ai, a general AI agent built with a simple constraint: if something can t be verified, it shouldn t be made up.
Barie focuses on deep research, source-backed outputs, and multi-step execution, with a strong emphasis on minimizing hallucinations. Instead of stopping at answers, it connects with real tools through connectors so research and reasoning can turn into actual work.
Share the name of your product, a brief description of how it will help the community, and your launch date, and let's support each other and hunt together. Let's get connected on Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/boyuan_qian
X (Twitter): https://x.com/boyuan_qian
I would love to know what you people are working on. Maybe I will find some excellent and exciting tools, SaaS, extensions, or productivity tools that I can share with my audience.
Hi Makers! Are you launching soon? It's always nerve wracking coming up to launch day and some feedback can go a long way. Let's help each other out, after you provide feedback to a maker about their product share your product link for feedback. BE SPECIFIC about who your target audience is and how we can help. This thread is for you if you are: (1) launching soon or recently launched (2) looking for beta users (3) asking for feedback on a landing page Happy making
