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AustinGrandt

93 karma · joined September 10, 2013

Midwest based maker.

http://www.austingrandt.com

Feel free to reach out on Twitter @AustinGrandt

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AustinGrandt··on Launch HN: Azalea Robotics (YC S24) – Baggage-handling robots for airports
Previous baggage handler turned software dev here. Looks like you are targeting the bag room right now which is the best spot to start to prove the concept. It was surprising to me how manual the entire loading & sorting process was when I worked for the airlines.

I'm curious if there's any roadmap eventually to get this out to the ramp itself. Most of the back injuries seemed to happen in the bin itself because you have to often hunch/be on your knees in a bin tossing 50+ pound bags. I know airlines would probably be very hesitant to have any new equipment around their planes but just curious if there's any discussion around that.

Other side note, I also used to work in Cargo and always thought there could be way more efficient ways of loading loose packages that are on every flight and this seems to be a great possibility for those as well.

Awesome work & will keep tabs on it!

AustinGrandt··on Ask HN: Professional sports shutdown what will fill peoples leisure time now?
Esports and their associated leagues have a big opportunity to possibly go more mainstream at the moment. They are well suited for this particular situation as big tournaments can be done fully remote. Some examples are The Call of Duty League announced that they will be continuing their season fully remote and I believe the Rocket League College Series is roughly already fully remote.

It's also an activity that people who are watching it can then participate in after the event.

Could be a big opportunity for some of the more accessible competitive games to be on "regular" TV or at the very least have huge live streams on Twitch/Youtube.

AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Career Database – Salary and employment data on 550 careers
most definitely there are some blind spots I will need to fill in. Other ones I saw that were missing was UX Designer and other designer type roles. I will probably add these in the future, but want to make sure I can find a reputable data source.
AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Career Database – Salary and employment data on 550 careers
Hi HN,

I leveraged a couple of different databases from the US government on employment and salary data to create this database. I wanted a more visual view of the data and created some visualizations to see heat maps, salary by state, etc. I hope people find this useful and are able to see what they should be earning or find a place to move where they could be making more money.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

AustinGrandt··on Why switching jobs is the fastest path to doubling your salary
definitely agree. I wrote this a bit overly simplified to showcase the point that even mid-sized raises can quickly be outweighed by bigger jumps. There are a lot of specific situations that may or may not apply to your specific role.

I do think though that I used modest assumptions for switching jobs, so the math evens out. For those that are already underpaid a jump of 30-50% is not unheard of.

AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Finally stick to your new years resolution and write more with Blurt
Been using Blurt for the past week as an early tester of writing efforts. It has been really nice to have a goal every day to hit as I try to build a writing habit. It's my new years resolution, but I wanted to start early.

So far what is working for me to keep my habit up:

- Have a list of topics to write about

- Set aside a specific time each day to write (trying to figure out what time works best still)

- Use the blur function on Blurt to do a brain dump

I still haven't built the habit where it comes "naturally", but I think this will help. I sub-consciously know that I want to meet my writing goal every day and keep my streak up.

AustinGrandt··on Robinhood launches 3% checking account
It looks like both FDIC and SIPC have a 250K protection, are there any other differences between the two that would matter to an average consumer?
AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Remote Path, a filterable database of remote career paths and companies
Hi HN,

after not finding another database/list of remote companies that had the information I wanted, I decided to start building my own. What I came up with is a database of companies and careers that you can filter by the things you care about like paid co-working, average salary, etc.

The idea is that no matter if you are just starting to get interested in remote work, or a seasoned nomad you should be able to find value from the site.

If you are early/curious about remote work check out our database of careers to see what options you might have with your skill set, otherwise find a company that has the perks you want.

It's still very early (I have a lot more content to add), but try it out and let me know what you think!

AustinGrandt··on AMC unveils answer to MoviePass
Been a MoviePass subscriber for a long time (back when it was $30+) and I am still a big fan, but this offering has me honestly thinking about switching.

I already pay for AMC stubs and go to AMC the majority of the time. Combined with being able to book beforehand, go to premieres, and see the 1 or 2 movies in IMAX that I want to each year this could be good.

Only drawback is AMC's pass not having the flexibility/number of theater's with MoviePass, especially for more indie theaters where I live. Curious to see how MoviePass responds (if at all)

AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Calculators that provide insights on how to improve your finances
Hi HN,

I have been working on a series of calculators that provide insights to help people improve their finances. The core concept is to give users small ways to improve (like saving $25 extra a week) that add up to big changes over time.

Would love any feedback or feature requests!

AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
I think if you look in the advanced fields you can change to how much you need in retirement to set a separate number. We auto calculate and extrapolate based on current savings rate, but a lot of people will spend much less in retirement.

Just fill out the field income in retirement under advanced fields and I think that should (hopefully) be what you're looking for.

AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
Awesome tool! I honestly feel like the more of these there are in the world, the better. So many opportunities to help people learn more about investing, saving, etc.

I know that's a bug I need to fix, something with bootstrap. Thanks for pointing it out and hopefully will have a fix tonight!

AustinGrandt··on Show HN: Investment Calculator – A simple retirement calculator
I agree with this. Inflation is a huge factor and needs to be considered with any retirement calculator because you can't assume that your $100K today is worth $100K in 20 years.

I actually built a calculator myself to better accommodate for inflation and have the ability to tweak the numbers just a bit more. If you're interested:

https://www.financialtoolbelt.com/calculators/financial-inde...

AustinGrandt··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (May 2017)
Location: Midwest, USA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Possibly

Technologies: Python, Django, HTML/CSS/JS, Angular, LESS, Node, jQuery, Bootstrap

Résumé/CV: http://austingrandt.com/ and https://github.com/doompatrol

Email: austin.grandt@gmail.com

Midwest based developer with a lot of front end experience. Have worked with companies of all sizes and various technologies. Working on Alexa skills, Chrome Extensions, and web apps in current role. Looking for full time if possible and would love to connect with any companies looking for Midwest or remote developers.

AustinGrandt··on Ask HN: What's the one thing that let you grow the most as a developer?
Having something that I wanted to build/hack on was what helped me get started. Most people starting out focus solely on doing tutorials, but it's really hard to get things to stick for me in that scenario. Having my own project allowed for me to trouble shoot, build, and deploy my own app helped me stay motivated to learn and gave me great experience.

At the beginning, I wanted to hack on simple things like creating a blog or twitter clone which pieces of can be found in tutorials. As you get more experience you can build increasingly complex things in shorter time spans.

AustinGrandt··on Japanese Toilets: The Future Called 30 Years Ago
A lot of the Japanese toilets have water saving mechanisms where the water that fills the toilet is used for a small sink on the top of the toilet to wash your hands.

I agree that there are more ways that we should be conserving water, and we are beginning to see more toilets with a small or large flush function (which almost all Japanese toilets have as well).

As for your question about the noise function in Japanese toilets, fancy bathrooms sometimes have a noise function to cover up the noise of using the bathroom. Most normally it is a recording of a toilet flushing, but some other more "luxurious" ones have little jingles that play when you hit a button.

AustinGrandt··on Help me distribute $100,000 to new entrepreneurs in Africa
This mindset seems to be relatively prevalent in Western business circles, but I don't think that is the mindset of this person. I think he's simply interested in distributing micro loans for interesting projects in Africa. Admittedly, it would be nice to have a little more direction to go off of than that.

If anyone reading this is interested check out the book "Success in Africa" to get an in depth look into the perception of Africa as a single homogenous place.