My name is

Kohei Hisakuni

and I

create and maintain software.

Lately I mostly work on Go backend services running in the cloud. I strive to continuously iterate on what I’m building to get at the very core of the problem being solved. I believe empathy is the most important part of building software: I always try to look at the problem from the user's perspective, and I endeavor to be the best teammate I can be.

I fell in love with coding while taking a computer science class on a whim in undergrad, and have been a devoted student of the craft ever since. Software is my profession, but it's also my hobby so I'm usually tinkering around with something.

work

I’ve worked at several companies, from small to medium sized startups to larger established companies. I’ve gained valuable experience from working at companies at several different stages, and you can read more about my work experience here.

technology

My focus has been in building backend systems in Go. I have a lot of experience using Terraform to deploy workloads to the cloud, and have experience with AWS, Azure, and GCP. I have experience with various data stores, primarily with DynamoDB, Firestore, PostgreSQL, and ClickHouse, in addition to data stores that I’ve used here and there, like MySQL, Cassandra, and Redis. Recently I’ve been using Vertex AI to leverage LLMs.

communication

Creating software is a team sport. I believe that effective communication and collaboration are what make teams successful, and I strive to be the best teammate I can be to achieve goals that we set together.

write it down

I’ve found that being diligent about getting ideas and decisions down on paper usually pays dividends. From detailed architectural diagrams, to back-of-the-napkin plans, to decisions made during a meeting: creating a record helps others understand why things are the way they are and reminds us in the future what our motivations were.

get it done

It’s easy to get stuck when creating software. There are several decisions to make, trade-offs to weigh, requirements to flesh out, and future use-cases to consider. It’s easy to get bogged down when solving challenging problems in a complex environment. To make progress, I try to simplify as much as I can and prioritize the work. Focusing on crawling before walking allows us to ship quickly and learn from real data, so we can make the right decisions to get to running.

in my free time

I enjoy working on projects around the house. I like the tactile nature of carpentry, and find the tangible outcome very rewarding. Feel free to ask me about what I’m working on!