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Comment by shoo | Hacker News Reader

For the lame definition of valuable: if you are not in the practise of negotiating, try to negotiate in more situations and see what happens! Attempting to negotiate will not harm your situation when dealing with another party making you a genuine offer.

Even if you are a very mediocre negotiator, you might be able to easily eg obtain a somewhat higher salary when starting a job versus just accepting a given offer if you're not aware that negotiation is possible/expected.

(This doesn't work in all situations, some employment markets are highly regulated and don't have market rates, negotiation is more likely to produce better results if you are in a stronger negotiating position...)

If you have an hour, read https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

If you have a few hours, read through the book "getting to yes"

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I think "Never split the difference" by Chris Voss is the better book if you can tolerate a bit of bragging.

In your opinion, what does Voss' book do better?

There's also a Farnham Street podcast with Voss: https://fs.blog/2018/01/chris-voss/

It doesn't focus exclusively on "let's make the pie bigger", and it's more hands-on. NStD gives you practical tips, GtY is more of a framework (and maybe an ideology).

Plus, it's also a book on active manipulation (in a wider sense) and an even better when read after "When I say no I feel guilty" which deals with defending against manipulations.

None of them can be read in an hour, nor can they be made a habit in a month.

> Attempting to negotiate will not harm your situation when dealing with another party making you a genuine offer.

I'm not sure what you are basing this on. I can say for certain that it's not true for me. Maybe it's only true in some negotiation contexts.

I sometimes sell stuff on the Internet. I put in a price and say this is firm. Many, many times, people contact me, and the first thing they do is try to negotiate the price down. I instantly blacklist them. I'm not here for the hassle. Either you are interested or not. So yes, if you are dealing with me, and you are truly interested, negotiating will harm your situation.

Also, I hate negotiating with a passion. I find it promotes double speak and adds uncertainty. Pick a price and stick with it, don't change the contract midway. If I can negotiate the price down, I won't really consider it a win. Instead, you will loose my trust. Why didn't you put in the true offer in the first place? It makes me feels that if I hadn't negotiated, you would have silently robbed me. I will thus assume you are still silently robbing me, as I'm not here to spend my time negotiating further down.

Are you using price negotiation as an example or are you reducing negotiation to price? Because these writers will say negotiation is everywhere (in relationships, dating, friendships, corporate politics, getting good customer service, any sort of search for a favorable compromise in any sort of way).

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