The reason I'm taking a general business question and localize it to software development is that I'm curious as to whether there are certain trends/etiquette/nuances that are typical to our industry. For example, I can imagine two different attitudes employers may generally have to payment negotiations: 1) we'll give you the best offer so we can't really be flexible about it because we already pretty much gave you everything we can give you, or 2) we'll give him an average offer and give in to a better one if forced to.

If you try to play hard ball in the first attitude it'll probably cost you the job because you ask for more than they can give you, however if you don't insist on better payment in the second one you'll get a worse offer.

In short, when applying to a typical job in our industry what are the typical attitudes from employers on the offers they give, what is the correct way to ask for a better payment, do these things differ between different types of companies (for example startups vs well entrenched companies), and how do these things differ between different kinds of applicants (graduate vs student)?