as a business owner/operator involved in everything from sales to hiring to vendor purchasing, here's the most important thing:
if you can't walk away from a negotiation, it's not really a negotiation. if you feel, at any point, compelled to stay even though your interests are not being met in a reasonable matter, you're going to get screwed - and it's your fault, not the other person's.
in a true negotiation both parties are attempting to find an optimum solution that solves for 2 sets of 'peer to peer' requirements. it's supposed to be a cooperative endeavor. if at any point it turns contentious, you back out immediately. the opportunity was never there. it was just an illusion. this is the hard thing for people to grasp.
unfortunately, for most people these are things you learn by doing. "not all that glitters is gold".
> if you can't walk away from a negotiation, it's not really a negotiation.
Reminds me of a quote from a G.K. Chesterton book:
> "But surely it is a very old principle of law that a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all the food is anything but a leonine contract."
> He glanced up at the fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high attic above. "I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony. If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture; for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the desperate [...]"
That's a very enlightening bit, especially for people who are not used to negotiate stuff all year round.
For me it boils down to this : I try to be as comfortable walking away as I would be accepting an offer. Otherwise I just don't enter any negotiation phase. Also when expressing salary expectations, I try to aim high enough to be sure they will not accept my initial demand. If they did that'd be a sign I just left something on the table.
However, it can be most difficult to put oneself in a position to leave the table. Developers are in a very privileged position in this regard. For most employees walking away could mean being out of a job for several months and employers know this.
if you can't walk away from a negotiation, it's not really a negotiation. if you feel, at any point, compelled to stay even though your interests are not being met in a reasonable matter, you're going to get screwed - and it's your fault, not the other person's.
in a true negotiation both parties are attempting to find an optimum solution that solves for 2 sets of 'peer to peer' requirements. it's supposed to be a cooperative endeavor. if at any point it turns contentious, you back out immediately. the opportunity was never there. it was just an illusion. this is the hard thing for people to grasp.
unfortunately, for most people these are things you learn by doing. "not all that glitters is gold".