I am not obligated to negotiate, especially if there is the possibility of competing offers. And because of this, a company's first offer very often is their best offer, and they never get a second chance.

The company is not buying trinkets at a flea market. It's trying to rent skilled labor in a competitive market. If you pay me less than I'm worth, I can usually find a higher bidder. So there is the price you can pay to get me to work for you next month, and there is a higher price you can pay to hire me and get me to stop seeking offers from other employers for the next N months.

And the possibility that someone would walk away rather than counter is the very thing that keeps initial offers reasonable for everybody. It is the very same principle behind unionized collective bargaining, without the cartel enforcer of the union. The Nash equilibrium is to always negotiate individually, because you will usually get more money, but the strategy that benefits the whole class (tech employees) the most in aggregate is for most of us to not negotiate at all, and to judge the first offer as the only offer, because that ensures that tech employers always have to open with their best possible offer, or risk losing the candidate entirely.

Fortunately for tech employers, tech employees don't have enough solidarity or a strong enough cartel enforcer to accept any common negotiations strategy.

I'm a programmer and I would prefer to negotiate via email. All those counter points could have been raised in the response instead of a little fit.

This part is business, not programming.

My biggest salary negotiation was part phone, part email. But the relationship was collaborative, so it worked.

This thread. Lesson is to be transparent while going through the process, so there's no surprises. And that all said, never feel guilty if it's ultimately the wrong decision for you. Hiring managers and recruiters are used to having to move on if a candidate falls through.