The art of negotiating the rate

When you’re self-employed, one of the most difficult things you have to do is negotiate the rate for the job with a client. All books on consultancy have a section on this. For what it’s worth, here are my thoughts on this tricky subject.

1. Get yourself into this mindset before you enter the meeting: you must not care whether this negotiation succeeds or not. If it does, fine; if not, there are plenty of other clients out there. Hold that mental framework throughout.

2. During the meeting, postpone the money part of the discussion. Start by reviewing the job itself, deliverables, relationships, reporting structure and anything else you can think of. Make a list in advance as it will end up as part of your proposal/contract. The reason is to make sure your potential client invests time in the potential contract, creating momentum for a successful outcome which carries over into the commercials. This is exactly what all salespeople do.

3. You don't propose an exact number when the question of day-rate (or contract value) comes up. Say "I'm thinking of something in the range of £X - £Y per day." Don't worry about pitching the required range too high and don't mentally backtrack during the meeting. This is a negotiation, not a 'go no-go' single-shot duel.

4. The client will either agree, in which case result, or they will pretend to look surprised and say "We were thinking more in terms of £Z." If that's the reply, then recognise that £Z is not the client’s highest number, look disappointed and say sadly that something a bit higher than that might work, but it will need to be reviewed after six months. (Of course if it really is too low, thank the client for his time and politely exit ... and, who knows, you just might be called back!).

5. Generally, you should always point out to the client that the agreed rate will be reviewed after a certain period (six months, a year). By default the client expects that future contracts will always be at the previously-agreed rate so it’s important to nudge them out of that mindset, as well as giving you a new negotiation-point  in case it turns out you sold your services too cheaply.

The evolution of near-sightedness

A lot of people are short-sighted - have myopia. The prevalence in western countries is 30-40% and in asian countries as high as 80%. This is weird: evolution should have removed anything genetic which cause so lethal a disability.

This suggests we look at environmental causes. This scary paper,  An Evolutionary Analysis of the Etiology and Pathogenesis of Juvenile-Onset Myopia, uses data on hunter-gatherer societies which were westernised within the last hundred years to show that myopia went from near-zero to western levels in one or two generations. The cause? Not so much 'near work' (reading, writing and computer screens) as changes in diet.

The culprit is sugar, and in particular processed carbohydrates with a high glycemic load. Read the paper for the details but along with obesity and diabetes, we can now add short-sightedness to the ills of junk food.

The Kindle 'Guardian'

Clare, in that Cherie Booth, proletarian, working-class way of hers, has finally rebelled against The Sunday Times. The last straw was a set of articles by columnists Minette Marin and India Night which, in their different ways, reflected on their times at their public schools. How elitist and metropolitan!

With great drama she exclaimed "That's the last time I will ever read The Sunday Times!"

In fact this heartfelt resolution will last up to this coming Sunday's Rod Liddle and Jeremy Clarkson, who make her laugh.

Anyway, she has decided to read the Saturday Guardian instead and I soon discovered that it's available (to mostly 5-star reviews) on the Kindle for 99p. The added advantage is that Clare has never learned how to read a broadsheet without destroying it (I am inclined to believe this is a skill which can only be acquired in childhood).

"The Cold Commands" - Richard Morgan

The second volume of the hard-edged fantasy trilogy, following "The Steel Remains". Morgan's swords and sorcery epic set in a far-future Earth deepens the mysteries around its central hero, Ringil Eskiath.

Some reviews on Amazon were uncomfortable with incomplete plot threads - notably the mission to the Kiriath island in the north: plainly an expedition will be launched in volume 3 for the denouement.

Meanwhile this is a well-written saga of everyday fighting folk - with lashings of sex, violence, torture, magic and derring-do. Fun, but not recommended for all the family.

Skyfall - James Bond film

The Vue, Cribbs Causeway, was full to capacity for the 12.40 pm performance - on a Sunday?!?

When we left at 3.30 the queue snaked out of the building. They were showing Skyfall at 30 minute intervals on 5 or 6 screens. I don't care what it cost - they are surely making a mint with this one.

You can no longer make Bond films merely out of mindless stunts and explosions, libertine sexual attitudes/practices and the odd joke. Standards have gone up: we're more serious, and locker-room male chauvinism seems so twentieth century.

The answer with this Bond is to give him some hinterland and personal issues without slumping on the stunts, which are extraordinary. Bond, it turns out, has childhood-trauma, while his antagonist has analogous angst: the film takes a Freudian view on all this.

Skyfall (the title is explained late in the film) also gives a nod to the perennial conflict between HumInt (the use of agents such as Bond) vs the use of signals intelligence/hacking as a pre-eminent form of espionage. M is forced to defend her use of such 'dinosaurs' as Bond against an unsympathetic government; it turns out Bond has his uses.

So half marks for deepening the Bond concept, but only half because the script doesn't really do this in any profound way. In the end the film is sophisticated candyfloss: delicious but insubstantial; very good but not great.

Still, it's better than 90% of the films you get to see, holds attention throughout and is loads of fun. Definitely worth it.

Fungus; Crampons-lite

This hairy thing, looking like a shock-jock's hair, was growing in our front garden. It's been relocated to the composting cage where it can mutate and consume at leisure.

My boots (borrowed from my son) are top of the range, heavy duty, completely waterproof, ankle supporting, blah-blah. But the rubber soles have eroded to slippery-smooth: traversing steep, stony paths is a walking-on-ice nightmare.

As a cheap and cheerful solution, I've bought some stretch-on crampon things, pictured. Made by Norwegians - and they're meant to know a bit about snow and grip.

I'll be back in the Brecon Beacons mid-November and who knows, maybe it will snow :-).

"The Hydrogen Sonata" – Iain M. Banks

A review of Iain M. Banks' latest Culture novel.

The Gzilt are in their final weeks before Subliming when a political crisis emerges. Evidence, rapidly suppressed, suggests that their whole culture is founded on a manipulative lie. If this becomes generally known, the whole Sublimation project may be in peril. The facts of the matter go back to the founding of the Culture, ten thousand years ago. An almost mythical Culture member was there, part of the negotiating team who seems to know the secret truth of the matter. But Ngaroe QiRia doesn’t want to be found.

Gzilt factions contend: one wants to suppress the facts and proceed with Sublimation; the other wants to discover the truth regardless. Inevitably the Culture itself is drawn in: weapons systems are soon in action. The heroine of this tale is Vyr Cossont, a Gzilt female musician who once met QiRia and was given a copy of his mind-state. Aided by the Culture ship “Mistake Not ...” the hunt is on.

Over the course of his Culture novels, Banks has systematically explored many aspects of his utopia. This novel is focused on the nature of Subliming, and how beings with Godlike powers (Culture Minds) can nevertheless have their actions constrained. Minor themes include the meaninglessness of life, the pointlessness of most political disputes and the self-parody of art.

Sublimation is like Heaven and how do you describe that? Banks has turned to String Theory (like some priests!) to locate the Sublime in the extra, compacted dimensions. To look back to the 4D of The Real from the Sublime is to imagine most of your senses and intellect to be switched off: sophisticated analogies are the best we can do and Banks spends time on this.

The Minds are very smart and one consequence of this is that they simulate possible outcomes of situations. In the simulation of political crises the potential actions of people are important. But once you start simulating people at a precision for accuracy, you’ve created people  ..  and that raises a cloud of ethical issues. So here we see a profound incompleteness theorem: the Minds can’t permit themselves simulations of sufficient power so will be surprised and get things wrong: the novelist still has a job to do.

The Hydrogen Sonata of the title is “T. C. Vilabier’s String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211.” The later-invented instrument is the elevenstring (after the dimensional count of String Theory) and the Sonata encodes the elements of the periodic table, starting with Hydrogen.  Is it any good? A notable critic writes: “As a challenge, without peer. As music, without merit.” At its first performance the audience was divided: some hated it, the rest really hated it.

Iain M. Banks’ latest Culture novel retains the house-style of beautiful descriptive writing, character-led plot development interleaved with intelligent speculation on all manner of things. It’s also pretty exciting. The whole Culture thing evidently still has plenty of mileage in it.

The iPad; Halloween

Here's my mother discussing her new iPad with grandson Adrian (click on the picture to make larger). And below our stock of goodies for Halloween.

Wiki Weapon; Psychopaths in the Media

Wiki Weapon (google it). The project for an open-source weapon constructable by a 3D-printer. Download the schematic via the Internet and your plastic/metal-fabricating machine will build you a lethal weapon in your very own home.

No more buying dodgy firearms in slovenly pubs from murky thugs (at inflated prices); no more smuggling 'pieces' through the X-ray machines and skeptical customs staff. Encrypt the design schematic and distribute via BitTorrent or similar denizens of the DarkNet and you're pretty safe from the authorities.

Might as well start planning for this future as it seems to be unstoppable.

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Television is a warm medium: it rewards emotion, charisma and ego over cool intellect. So think extraversion, charm, charisma, fearlessness ... and what do you get?

Looks to me like this is one area where the much-discredited 'precautionary principle' ought, in fact, to be applied.

What d'you say, Jimmy?

A Froggie came a-calling

A visitor found this morning in our recycling box, stored at the end of the garden (below). My brother wrote to advise it was probably a toad, however.

Clare and myself recently took Simon Baron-Cohen's AQ test. She scored 22 and I scored 28. The population norm is 16.4 and the Asperger onset point is around 32.

Assortative mating in action.