Evren Bal
Twenty-five years building software, now with AI's leverage behind me — and writing about what it actually changes, from inside the work, not the hype cycle.
I'm an Industrial Engineer who has been developing software since 1998 — a polyglot across many languages and stacks, from frontend and backend to the occasional game. By day I'm a CTO; on the side, a solo founder building my own products with AI as experiments. That hands-on history is the lens I write through.
Most AI commentary comes from the sidelines. Mine comes from the build: I use these tools every day to ship real things, and I write about what that reveals — practical, economic, and philosophical — from the trenches.
Own the IT strategy and roadmap — set up the team, manage external agencies (development, performance, SEO), make the architectural calls, and still code when it's needed. Built a rule-based lead-routing Agent Management System (with Google Ads conversion tracking and real-time dashboards), the Vanity Payment Manager, and VaniBot — a human-like chatbot across web, WhatsApp and social spanning the full patient journey.
Grew from plant manager to the IT & BizOps manager position — My primary responsibility was intranet apps, corporate website, landing pages and various microsites, and local admin for the group's international IT projects and integrations.
Independent again, between roles — diverse software projects, mostly web.
Co-founded the firm and led IT — built its custom CMS and blog (PHP/MySQL) and an online mystery-shopping and survey platform with real-time reporting.
Where it started — commercial, personal and non-profit web projects across all sorts of languages and technologies.