An element in Ruby (and some other languages) has straight forward index and a "reversed" one. So, string with length n has 0..(n-1) and additional (-n)..-1 indexes, but no more -- you can't use >=n or <-n indexes.
Pretty elegant using the endless range introduced in Ruby 2.6:
string = 'Austin'
string[1..] # => ustin
Hope that's handy for someone. Cuts a couple of characters from the best approach until now, and will be very readable once endless ranges are regularly adopted.