Superhuman's blog covers the email client's engineering and design, including offline web apps, search, command palettes and its acquisition by Grammarly.
HN links its offline architecture and sync engine posts, and discusses its sub-100ms speed and keyboard focus as differentiators.
Superhuman | Fullstack Engineer | San Francisco & Vancouver | Full-time |
At Superhuman, we're rebuilding the inbox from the ground up to make it extremely fast, delightful, and intelligent — you'll feel like you have superpowers.
We're looking for Fullstack Engineers who are deeply invested in building quality software to focus on building out our flagship desktop product. You'll be working heavily on everything that makes an email client tick: Storing and searching gigabytes of data in the browser; building blazingly fast, visually gorgeous user experiences; and jumping in wherever you can make the biggest impact.
• Stack: React, Golang, Postgres, Electron, Google Cloud
• Core values: Create Delight, Be Intentional, Remarkable Quality
• Growth: 20% MoM Growth, 250k+ users on wait list
• Funding: $51M+ from Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, and the founders of Gmail, GitHub, Stripe, Reddit, Intercom, and AngelList
• Interview process:
- Phone call with one of our founding Engineers to learn more - about team and tech challenges plus technical discussion
- Onsite with Emuye Reynolds, Head of Mobile, and me (CTO)
You can apply here https://superhuman.com/roles?gh_jid=260350 or shoot me questions at cirwin@superhuman.com
– Conrad
PS: Check out our blog https://blog.superhuman.com/
> I enjoy being involved with my company...
And you're probably subconsciously aware that it's a dopamine trap[1]. Probably the greatest fallacy of our time is that just because you enjoy something equates with it's good for you (or "if it feels good do it").
I super enjoy a taco bell run at 11PM even after I've hit my TDEE. Notice how that sentence is almost identical in structure, underlying point, and absurdity, to the sentence "I enjoy checking my email at 11PM even after I've logged 8 hours that day".
[1]: https://blog.superhuman.com/how-to-stop-checking-your-email/#:~:text=Your%20brain%20rewards%20you%20with,that%20same%20rush%20of%20dopamine.
Having recently worked on adding dark mode to our service [0], we found that the technical implementation was pretty easy (generous use of CSS custom properties and prefers-color-scheme). The design work to make it look good, have proper contrast, etc. is much harder. The article the people at Superhuman wrote [1] is a really good resource for this.
[0] https://kitemaker.co
[1] https://blog.superhuman.com/how-to-design-delightful-dark-themes-7b3da644ff1f
Fun fact: this is how github adds syntax highlighting in its search bar. A while back I built the same syntax highlighting in Shortwave (an email client) using the same “view on top of a transparent input” trick. Pair it all with the following blog, for a top notch search UX
https://blog.superhuman.com/delightful-search-more-than-meets-the-eye/
> I always assume these trackers use some hidden pixel image when sending emails - but how can they trace the exact person who opened the email?
Apparently they use a hidden pixel, i.e. a separate tracking code, for each recipient. There was a discussion about this feature in Super Human: https://blog.superhuman.com/read-statuses-bdf0cc34b6a5
> Superhuman's sub-100ms rule—plus their focus on keyboard shortcuts—changed the email game in a way that no one's been able to replicate, let alone beat.
https://blog.superhuman.com/superhuman-is-being-acquired-by-grammarly/
Being fast helps, but is rarely a product.