#132 - Clarity Over Tooling: Velocity & Building Teams Without Drama with Loïc Houssier // CTO @ Superhuman Mail

In this episode of the Alphalist Podcast, Tobi interviews Loic Hussier, CTO of Superhuman Mail (formerly CTO of Superhuman, now part of Superhuman, which includes Grammarly and Coda). Loic discusses the acquisition of Superhuman by Grammarly and the shared vision of creating an AI-native productivity suite. He shares his career journey, from security research in France to VP of Engineering roles in the US, highlighting the importance of fast learning, working with smarter people, and execution. Loic emphasizes providing clarity to teams, measuring progress through PRs per engineer, and building verticalized teams with limited dependencies. He also touches on the company's tech stack, favoring monorepos over microservices, and the significance of context when applying frameworks. The discussion covers Superhuman's design-centric approach, focus on speed, and the "Android millisecond rule." Loic concludes by advising young engineers to take risks and recognizing the safety net provided by European social democracies.