Getting to yes
Getting to Yes offers a concise, step-by-step, proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict—whether it involves parents and children, neighbors, bosses and employees, customers or corporations, tenants or diplomats. Based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, a group that deals continually with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution from domestic to business to international, Getting to Yes tells you how to:Separate the people from the problem;Focus on interests, not positions;Work together to create options that will satisfy both parties; andNegotiate successfully with people who are more powerful, refuse to play by the rules, or resort to "dirty tricks."Since its original publication in 1981, Getting to Yes has been translated into 18 languages and has sold over 1 million copies in its various editions. This completely revised edition is a universal guide to the art of negotiating personal and professional disputes. It offers a concise strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict.
Stats for nerds
105recommend
185mentions
135people
2007–2026years
74% recommend24% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The book "Getting to Yes" covers similar terrain, from a different angle, but still targeting Win-Win, without sounding as manipulative as "influence people".
BTW, Dale Carnagey changed his name to crease a false association with Andrew Carnegie.
So there is good reason to distrust Dale and his followers.
- Having spent some time in outbound sales (after tech burn-out), the most important aspect (as many comments say) is "relationships". The best training for that is to go out and make them. We had sales training every single day, so it's really not something you can pick up a book or go to a weekend class and walk away being effective. That said, books and classes are a good way to find your footing.
Never Eat Alone - Keith Ferrazzi (networking & relationship building)
Never Sit in the Lobby - Glenn Poulos (sales & relationships)
Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher (negotiation, particularly "principled negotiation")
The Joy of Selling - Steve Chandler
The Psychology of Selling - Brian Tracy
In one of our quarterly division training, our office manager gave us Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People and were told if we learned nothing else, to study that book.
It's been over a decade since my sales time, but the 2 sales techniques I haven't forgotten are: "selling ins't telling" and "feel, felt, found". As you can imagine, they are about relating to people, not giving technical/spec speeches.
It's something you have to practice everyday, make sales a part of your job title -- not simply something you do on top of running the company. An integrated layer no different than other software maintenance task, except the maintenance is the relationships with people you want to sell to.
For any other tech types that may someday find they need sales skills, I highly recommend actual job experience in outbound sales (with a company that provides frequent sales training). It was a massive culture shock that gave me the professional people and relationship skills I struggled with.
- It’s funny, I switched from engineering to management a few years ago, and as part of learning to be a manager I really had to learn to negotiate (Avery Pennarun, founder of Tailscale, describes Eng managers as professional negotiators, which I think is at least partly true). I loved this article.
There’s a book on negotiation called “Getting to Yes” that uses a different framework, which became my preferred way to think about negotiation: The goal of a negotiation is to strike an agreement that both parties are happy about. The stereotypical negotiation, “I won’t go a cent below $10,” “well I won’t go a cent above $8” is bad negotiation because even if they meet at $9, neither is happy about it. Instead, the effective negotiator thinks creatively about what would make them happy and asks if it’s available.
As much as I basically agree with it, I would cast the advice in this article differently. Here’s my take, for what it’s worth:
- Re. all the author’s advice about withholding information: you may not be happy if one day you find out that you’re being paid 30% below market (though maybe you won’t care—know what you care about! It will help you negotiate more effectively). The ideal solution here, though, is to know about the market! Consult levels.fyi, talk to your friends, maybe interview from time to time before you’re really looking.
- Re. Don’t be the decision-maker: this is a useful rhetorical tactic, often also called “bad cop,” and it’s not really negotiation-specific but you can bring it into a negotiation if it helps you (at one startup, our co-founder would say on sales calls, “let me check with my sales team” when he was definitely the whole sales team). Honestly, IMO it’s only really useful if you’re trying to placate someone, which you hopefully shouldn’t be when you’re weighing their offer, but you’re welcome to use it if you have social anxiety about pissing off the recruiter (you probably won’t, but I understand the worry)
- Re. stay positive: …yes? The goal is to get to a deal you’re both happy with. If you’re already not happy, then the negotiation is already over. The effective negotiator walks away before getting mad—why burn a bridge over one deal not panning out?
- Have alternatives: honestly this is the main thing. I don’t know how much there is to say but anyone will understand you not being happy with a deal that’s already not your best option.
- Getting to Yes is a good very short book that has some gems in it. We used it in some business school class or other I took.
- After reading the book Getting to Yes, I really want some tool to help me negotiate more efficiently without having to memorize everything principle.
You start by putting in interests of each party, then you can explore different functions: how to respond to the other party, explore objective criteria out there or brainstorm more negotiation options.
Still working on it! Leave me feedback if you have any suggestions!
- My parents taught me to read at age 2 and the more I read the more I wanted to read. By the time I got to kindergarten, I had already read more than all the other kids. It inculcated the love of reading in me which paid dividends throughout my life.
It helped me greatly as an adult. Most of my peers in the tech industry haven’t read a book since high school (because their upbringing didn’t emphasize reading). But reading books and believing you can actually learn things from them helps you enter fields outside of what you went to school for. I taught myself stuff from books. I learned from books how to navigate corporate culture (High Output Management), how business actually works (the Halo Effect, Hard Things), how charisma actually works (How to Win Friends), templates for doing things I’m not good at (Difficult Conversations, Getting to Yes) etc.
Arguably you can learn all these things by reading articles and by watching YouTube.
But books are special. Granted most books today have a lot of fluff but at least for the parts that are useful, books slow me down and help me absorb at a better pace.
Similar to the idea of bioavailability of nutrients, books to me are more “bio available” in that they’re the same nutrients, but are better and more deeply absorbed.
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