High Low Piccolo with Ian Steyn

Reflections on my Co-op as a Customer Support Engineer

Ian Steyn — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 14:00:43 -0700

In this post-summer episode, Ian reflects on his co-op experience as a customer support person at Transistor. He gives an overview of what he did for his job and projects, as well as some highs, lows, and piccolos from across all 16 weeks of his co-op.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro
(01:19) - SUMMER OVERVIEW (customer support)
(02:29) - SUMMER OVERVIEW (debugging, docs, QA, user research)
(05:42) - SUMMER OVERVIEW (video podcasting)
(06:34) - SUMMER OVERVIEW (technical projects)
(09:39) - HIGH (mentorship)
(10:52) - HIGH (solving real problems)
(12:01) - LOW (balancing tasks)
(12:51) - LOW (more to do)
(13:41) - PICCOLO (REST APIs)
(14:38) - PICCOLO (podcasting technology)
(15:01) - PICCOLO (people problems)
(15:58) - Thank-yous

Links:

8 - PRs! Bad Actors! Ruby! (w/ Transistor Co-founder Jon Buda & Software Engineer Jason Pearl)

Ian Steyn — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:44:32 -0700

In this episode, Ian is joined by Transistor co-founder and engineering lead Jon Buda, as well as product person and senior engineer Jason Pearl. It’s an appropriately software engineering focused episode, as they discuss successful pull requests, annoying spammers and attackers, setting up apps for local development, thoughtfully using artificial intelligence tools, and the programming language Ruby.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro
(02:37) - HIGH
(11:51) - LOW
(20:35) - PICCOLO
(33:47) - Wrap-up

Links:

7 - CSS! Smoke! Explanations!

Ian Steyn — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:43:27 -0700

Ian discusses Weeks 12 and 13 at Transistor, which included some real actual contributions to podstandards.org (cleaning up CSS and visual bugs), as well as wildfire smoke affecting him in his real actual environment. And finally, he reflects on the different mechanisms through which Customer Support people identify systemic problems.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro
(00:46) - HIGH
(03:48) - LOW
(05:55) - PICCOLO
(10:04) - Wrap-up

Links:

6 - New Projects! Updated Knowledge! Peculiar PEMs! (w/ Head of Customer Success Helen Ryles)

Ian Steyn — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:55:15 -0700

In Episode 6, Ian is joined by his supervisor: Helen Ryles, Transistor’s Head of Customer Success!

Both are excited about the start of new projects; Helen is planning the company’s annual retreat, and Ian has just finished the first phase of work on updating a WordPress theme for the Podcast Standards Project.

They also reflect on how hard it is to find time for these projects, given the rapid product changes and complex customer queries that have been coming in lately. The fight to reach “inbox zero” and keep documentation up to date continues!

Helen also tells of some recent side projects and the quest to update her technical skillset, which she is starting to do by building small, useful, local apps. And finally, Ian presents a peculiar case where data is stored in a file name.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro
(02:39) - HIGH - Helen
(05:24) - HIGH - Ian
(10:38) - LOW - Helen
(15:52) - LOW - Ian
(23:39) - PICCOLO - Helen
(29:02) - PICCOLO - Ian
(32:20) - Wrap-up

Links:

The Podcast Standards Project: podstandards.org
Transistor.fm

P.S. — This description is not AI-generated, because I like to practice synthesizing my ideas ;) (the same goes for all HLP episode descriptions)

5 - Waitlist Whittling! Link Legwork! Production Ponderings!

Ian Steyn — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 18:01:21 -0700

In this episode, Ian discusses Week 8 and 9 at Transistor, where he’s whittled down the large video podcasting waitlist and completed the somewhat arduous task of finding dozens of old listing URLs for a customer. He also reflects on how such work can be helpful for getting acquainted with systems and problems. And finally, he looks back on last episode’s production process to consider why video podcasts take a little bit more to make.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro
(01:03) - HIGH
(03:54) - LOW
(09:10) - Discussion: How can a manual slog be helpful?
(11:10) - PICCOLO
(15:45) - Wrap-up

Links:

Transistor.fm

4 - Video! Video! Video! (w/ Transistor Co-founder Justin Jackson)

Ian Steyn — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 21:03:34 -0700

In the show's first ever video episode, Ian is joined by Justin Jackson, the CEO and co-founder of Transistor.fm (and the reason this podcast exists)! As it turns out, video has found its way into every corner of the company in the past few weeks, and together Ian and Justin reflect on lessons learned through video's impact on customer support, engineering, product design, and business growth.

Justin talks customer calls, while Ian reflects on gaining so-called "expertise" in video questions and docs. Both feel the tension of mediating between customer expectations and engineering priorities, and reflect on how that tension can be used towards forward progress. Finally, Justin discusses what indicates that a new product really is in demand, and Ian celebrates the launch of his own little product (the integration project has been deployed!).

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro
(02:04) - HIGH - Justin
(05:11) - Discussion: Get out of the way
(07:01) - HIGH - Ian
(09:01) - Discussion: What is needed for continued growth?
(14:12) - LOW - Justin
(17:11) - LOW - Ian
(19:40) - Discussion: How can we reduce the friction?
(23:25) - PICCOLO - Justin
(26:47) - PICCOLO - Ian
(30:18) - Wrap-up

Links:

Transistor.fm

3 - Project Progress! Solo Support! Humble Hono!

Ian Steyn — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:51:20 -0700

This episode, Ian reflects on his fourth and fifth weeks at Transistor, which included progressing his technical project past the concept stage, running the customer support "desk" solo during the daytime, and getting to know a neat little tool called Hono.

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro
(01:04) - High
(04:40) - Low
(06:10) - Piccolo

Links:

BONUS - "Fifth Hundredth" (Episode 2 Bonus Clips)

Ian Steyn — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 15:34:35 -0700

Some fun bonus clips from the cutting room floor of 2 - On Track! Detective Work! Technical Quirks! (w/ Support Engineer Michael Green).

2 - On Track! Detective Work! Technical Quirks! (w/ Support Engineer Michael Green)

Ian Steyn — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:41:31 -0700

Ian is joined by a his mentor Michael Green, a "real" customer support engineer at Transistor who is "not AI". This week, Michael celebrates getting back to inbox zero but misses his home recording set-up, while Ian talks detective work for customers and chasing wild geese for his coding project. Both present findings on quirks of modern podcasting: Does anyone offer private video features? And what's up with those pesky episode numbers?

Timestamps

(00:00) - Intro
(00:55) - High - Michael
(02:15) - High - Ian
(05:12) - Low - Michael
(06:58) - Low - Ian
(10:06) - Piccolo - Michael
(12:38) - Piccolo - Ian
(16:37) - Wrap-up

Links

Other Notes

Since recording this episode, I've discovered that Overcast also supports episode numbers!

1 - Podcast Launch! Busy Inbox! Open Standards!

Ian Steyn — Fri, 22 May 2026 16:02:20 -0700

Ian reflects on his first two weeks at Transistor, which included starting a show, answering many customer support tickets, and learning about the unique world of open podcast standards and RSS feeds.

Timestamps:

(00:59) - High
(02:10) - Low
(03:59) - Piccolo

Links:

Coming Soon: High Low Piccolo with Ian Steyn

Ian Steyn — Wed, 20 May 2026 15:38:31 -0700

High Low Piccolo with Ian Steyn is a new podcast where I will be sharing successes, challenges and interesting things learned during my co-op experience as a customer support engineer at Transistor.fm.