4 ms·

It's like entropy: the emotional bullshit in a closed system only increases. Until one person leaves, or you bleed off the pressure outside it. With negotiati

by dmoney 13y ago

It's like entropy: the emotional bullshit in a closed system only increases. Until one person leaves, or you bleed off the pressure outside it. With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. All the nonverbal skills are just used to hide the math layer of the exchange. Assuming you can't dump the shady opponent for one who thinks win-win, but even then having more information can't hurt.

lsc 13y ago
>With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. You say 'shady' - I say 'professional' because this is what the big guys do. the bullshit isn't nearly as thick when you are dealing with a smaller company, generally speaking. They are less interested in wasting time. Even when dealing with professionals, information is essential, but it doesn't make the emotional bullshit irrelevant. It's irritating, as first? I don't know if I want to do something unless I know what it costs. The negotiated price is generally 30% to 50% of the list price (but that varies a /lot/ both by vendor and by industry.) And the only real way to get prices is to negotiate with a vendor. So, yeah, I'm looking at a /lot/ of work to just find out if a business that, say, requires more bandwidth makes any sense at all.
- dmoney 13y ago
  So the business wouldn't make sense (but just be less profitable) if you had to pay the list price?
  - lsc 13y ago
    some businesses, it makes the difference, like re-selling bandwidth or co-lo; the margin I get on that sort of thing is usually between 10-50% so if I negotiate badly from my supplier, yeah, I'm losing money on the deal (or charging above-market rates, which considering that I'm bad at negotiation, means I'm losing even more money because the space sits empty.) - usually you have to get commercial style leases on those resources, too... and so you have all the problems of commercial leases 'Oh,' the landlord says 'you are doing well... now that your lease is up, of course, the market rates have gone up!' even if there are empty units on either side of you. So yeah, for co-lo? it makes all the difference in the world. Other things, like VPSs? it's just a matter of profitability... the margins on VPSs are pretty good if you don't count labor, so it'd be a matter of just not raising my bandwidth quotas like I ought and maybe spending more money on hardware. Sometimes, there are two substitute products, one where it's traditional to negotiate, and one where it isn't... for instance, if you buy pre-assembled servers? if you aren't getting 50% off list price, you are getting it in the shorts. But, if you are buying the parts used to build said servers? generally speaking, the lowest price on the internet is pretty close to the real lowest price. This is the primary reason why I do my own assembly; assembling computers is way easier than negotiating Dell down to a reasonable price. So yeah; this is starting to shape what businesses I want to get into. I mean, co-location only has margin if you own the building. (I'm working on that part, but I don't have an ETA.) - so yeah, if the 'owning the building' deal doesn't work out... well, I'm not going to dump existing customers, but I am not taking more at the moment.
lsc 13y ago
>It's like entropy: the emotional bullshit in a closed system only increases. Until one person leaves, or you bleed off the pressure outside it. I dono. my experience has been that the emotional bullshit comes and goes, like the tide. Part of that is, well, it's not a closed system, but part of it is that social bullshit, in my experience, mostly goes away when you rationalize it; By 'rationalize it' I don't mean 'make it rational' I mean make up some (mostly bullshit) rational explanation for the emotional bullshit. I say mostly bullshit because, well, emotions are not logical, and all logical models for explaining emotions that I know of are really terrible (I mean, not very predictive) models. But still, assigning a believable logical explanation to a difficult feeling, in my experience, makes that feeling not so difficult anymore. It makes me feel like I'm in control of myself, and this... makes me feel vastly better. If I feel like I'm in control, or even that it's /possible/ to control, I find that letting go and focusing on something else is way easier. If I don't feel like I have control, it's really hard not to obsess. (which seems like the opposite of what I would do if I was designing the system; why should I spend effort on something I can't effect? I want to spend effort where that effort has effect. Fuck you, limbic system.) I think the other reason it seems to come and go in waves is that there are at least two people involved. If I am in good emotional shape, I can act as a buffer for the other person's emotional bullshit, and the total amount of bullshit in the system is much less than it would be otherwise. On the other hand, if I am feeling the effects of the social bullshit at the same time as the other person, the effect is almost multiplicative.

by dmoney 13y ago

lsc 13y ago

>With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. You say 'shady' - I say 'professional' because this is what the big guys do. the bullshit isn't nearly as thick when you are dealing with a smaller company, generally speaking. They are less interested in wasting time. Even when dealing with professionals, information is essential, but it doesn't make the emotional bullshit irrelevant. It's irritating, as first? I don't know if I want to do something unless I know what it costs. The negotiated price is generally 30% to 50% of the list price (but that varies a /lot/ both by vendor and by industry.) And the only real way to get prices is to negotiate with a vendor. So, yeah, I'm looking at a /lot/ of work to just find out if a business that, say, requires more bandwidth makes any sense at all.

dmoney 13y ago
So the business wouldn't make sense (but just be less profitable) if you had to pay the list price?
- lsc 13y ago
  some businesses, it makes the difference, like re-selling bandwidth or co-lo; the margin I get on that sort of thing is usually between 10-50% so if I negotiate badly from my supplier, yeah, I'm losing money on the deal (or charging above-market rates, which considering that I'm bad at negotiation, means I'm losing even more money because the space sits empty.) - usually you have to get commercial style leases on those resources, too... and so you have all the problems of commercial leases 'Oh,' the landlord says 'you are doing well... now that your lease is up, of course, the market rates have gone up!' even if there are empty units on either side of you. So yeah, for co-lo? it makes all the difference in the world. Other things, like VPSs? it's just a matter of profitability... the margins on VPSs are pretty good if you don't count labor, so it'd be a matter of just not raising my bandwidth quotas like I ought and maybe spending more money on hardware. Sometimes, there are two substitute products, one where it's traditional to negotiate, and one where it isn't... for instance, if you buy pre-assembled servers? if you aren't getting 50% off list price, you are getting it in the shorts. But, if you are buying the parts used to build said servers? generally speaking, the lowest price on the internet is pretty close to the real lowest price. This is the primary reason why I do my own assembly; assembling computers is way easier than negotiating Dell down to a reasonable price. So yeah; this is starting to shape what businesses I want to get into. I mean, co-location only has margin if you own the building. (I'm working on that part, but I don't have an ETA.) - so yeah, if the 'owning the building' deal doesn't work out... well, I'm not going to dump existing customers, but I am not taking more at the moment.

lsc 13y ago

>It's like entropy: the emotional bullshit in a closed system only increases. Until one person leaves, or you bleed off the pressure outside it. I dono. my experience has been that the emotional bullshit comes and goes, like the tide. Part of that is, well, it's not a closed system, but part of it is that social bullshit, in my experience, mostly goes away when you rationalize it; By 'rationalize it' I don't mean 'make it rational' I mean make up some (mostly bullshit) rational explanation for the emotional bullshit. I say mostly bullshit because, well, emotions are not logical, and all logical models for explaining emotions that I know of are really terrible (I mean, not very predictive) models. But still, assigning a believable logical explanation to a difficult feeling, in my experience, makes that feeling not so difficult anymore. It makes me feel like I'm in control of myself, and this... makes me feel vastly better. If I feel like I'm in control, or even that it's /possible/ to control, I find that letting go and focusing on something else is way easier. If I don't feel like I have control, it's really hard not to obsess. (which seems like the opposite of what I would do if I was designing the system; why should I spend effort on something I can't effect? I want to spend effort where that effort has effect. Fuck you, limbic system.) I think the other reason it seems to come and go in waves is that there are at least two people involved. If I am in good emotional shape, I can act as a buffer for the other person's emotional bullshit, and the total amount of bullshit in the system is much less than it would be otherwise. On the other hand, if I am feeling the effects of the social bullshit at the same time as the other person, the effect is almost multiplicative.