[X] My Assistant

[Epicedion]

Remember that corps also have a "corp society" where employees are born to corp parents, raised in corp schools, and shuffled into appropriate corp jobs. I imagine that when little corp kids reach a certain age they're tested and filed as trainable or untrainable for skilled jobs. A portion of the untrainable would be moved into menial tasks, while another portion would be offered a skill package.

The benefit to the corp would be huge. They'd have a drone on a leash, and be able to reconfigure the skilljacked workforce into whatever arrangement is financially suitable without having to mess around with anything as complex as retraining, determining suitability, or literally any factor other than the number of warm bodies they have available. Your skilljacked accountant can just as easily be a skilljacked lab tech, or a skilljacked data entry specialist. Immediately, with no more effort than flipping a switch.

NutraSoy customer service in Vietnam isn't going so hot? Reconfigure 200 German customer service reps with Vietnamese linguasofts and put them on duty today. H&R Block needs to be liquidated? Replace all your tax accountants' knowsofts with gambling knowsofts and put them to work on the floor of the new casino that's opening tomorrow.

[Wakshaani]

Yuppers. That's the "beauty" of skilljacks and skill wires; you get loyal people with the ability to do what you need, then give them the tools that they need to complete the task. Move your artists into shipping when crunch time comes and they do it like old pros. Have your janitorial slot in cooking programs to handle lunch, then back to janitorial after the fact for cleanup. Make everyone an accountant when tax time gets near, then ditch 'em for teh rest of the year.

Etc etc etc.

Horizon was all over that.

[CanRay]

Remember that corps also have a "corp society" where employees are born to corp parents, raised in corp schools, and shuffled into appropriate corp jobs.

"With the ability to work from home, I can spend time with my family and not feel like I'm neglecting the Corporation!"

[FuelDrop]

So... anyone got any figures on how much it costs to train cops? cos if it's cheaper to give cops skillwires rather than training or, more particularly, give detectives skillchips instead of training them in detective skills, that would be a huge advantage to shadowrunners as we'd be able to reliably know how they think.

[DMiller]

So... anyone got any figures on how much it costs to train cops? cos if it's cheaper to give cops skillwires rather than training or, more particularly, give detectives skillchips instead of training them in detective skills, that would be a huge advantage to shadowrunners as we'd be able to reliably know how they think.

Though I don't have cost figures, I doubt that many Law Enforcement people (at least by the rank of Detective) would be chipped. Being a detective involves a lot of creative thinking and intuition (gut instinct) that chips can not provide. You will likely find a few skills chipped in the lower ranks, and even maybe a few skills chipped even at the detective level, but not the core investigative skills. Those will need to be actual skills for the better detectives.

IMO

[White Buffalo]

I would imagine that would create a glut of true skilled workers. Detectives don't come out of the academy as detectives. They gain experience as beet cops and study and between books and experience take and pass a detectives exam. But with skill wires as presented in Unwired there is no experience gained. When the chip turns off you know as much as you did before you turned it on. It'd be hard to grow into a truly skilled detective/doctor/scientist/etc. under such a system.

[ChromeZephyr]

They gain experience as beet cops....

"Put the rhubarb down and slowly back away! You have 5 seconds to comply!" (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Not making fun of you, White Buffalo, beet cop just made me snicker. It's "beat cop".

[Jaid]

Well just for a Bachelors: Private Four-Year Not-For-Profit College: National Average: $85,296 per year.

I know modern American dollars and 2075 NuYen isn't the same thing, but considering something like 75% of the applicable workforce only needs a rating 3 Skilljack (60,000 NuYen for new) and only smaller subset of above average individuals need the more expensive Skillwire system too (rating 4 skilljack and skillwire is 160,000 NuYen for new) and those are the corp equivalent of middle class: chipped lab techs and basic doctors living a decent life but unlikely to have much in the way of promotion prospects. Looking at modern averages, for medical school: "In 2010, the median debt at graduation was $150,000 at public institutions, $180,000 at private, and $160,000 combined."

If it's $160,000 for a medical education taking more than 6 years, or $160,000 for an implanted skilljack 4 and skill wire 4, taking a few months at worst... with various extras like re-programing, or cutting the wires out after 5 years when the person defaults on their debt... well why would you as an HR manager direct people towards education instead of wires?

So yes, I think my numbers aren't so crazy for 2070s, but as to why people don't go door to door killing corp employees and carefully cutting out their augmentations for black market sales... well maybe because that's the kind of thing corps hunt you down and do terrible things to you for. Especially because they notice all those wireless devices going often line one after another inside their extra-territoriality subdivisions where they have plenty of security forces?

Also, this is for average (skilljack rating 3) to Competent (rating 5) employees. The 40% of the population that is lower average or worse is getting very little if anything, and those are the ones living in low-class high density housing only somewhat above SINless. Essentially the jobs that in modern terms don't have college degrees. The upper 20% (?) of the population isn't wired, because they are worth educating for the advantages of real knowledge/initiative instead of chipped skills. That's leaves just the middle section of the population, what is more or less the middle class in modern terms, that chipping is the more economical option for.

Then again, I'm by no means an expert, so I may very well be way off on these things. I think it at least makes an interesting dystopian megacorp setting.

technicians don't get a 6 year or even a 4 year program. it's generally a 2-year program, and at least where i am, is not nearly as inflated in cost as university. everything combined for a 2 year technician program that i looked at here was about 8-9,000 dollars canadian. now, granted, that's not the *full* cost (i'm sure it's subsidized, education almost always is), but that does include books. the amount of debt people graduate with almost certainly includes living expenses as well, which are incurred whether or not the person is in school.

in shadowrun, if you don't even really care how much the person actually understands, you could probably train them even less than that. sure, doctors cost a lot to train (though i rather suspect VR has brought the cost for training in almost anything down an awful lot), but then again, not everyone is a doctor.

and more to the point, if a person with skillwires is more than 10 times the cost of a drone with autosofts (and it's looking suspiciously like that is exactly the case), then you have no need for the person regardless. if you're just getting non-creative work done by corporate drones, you may as well use actual drones which can be just as versatile, most likely have much lower maintenance expenses, won't ever have loyalty issues, and cost a mere fraction of the amount.

remember, this is a setting where an almost humanoid drone can be purchased for 4,500 nuyen. no hands, but unless hands are going to cost more than 55,000 nuyen (assuming only chipjack; add another 60k for workers with skillwires), we're already ahead of the game. and that's before you factor in the cost for autosofts being lower (provided the missions emergency errata is the same as what the eventual official errata will be).

and if it's a position that doesn't require activesofts, you can likely even get away with an agent running a virtual persona and some appropriate autosofts.

[BlackJaw]

technicians don't get a 6 year or even a 4 year program. it's generally a 2-year program, and at least where i am, is not nearly as inflated in cost as university. everything combined for a 2 year technician program that i looked at here was about 8-9,000 dollars canadian. now, granted, that's not the *full* cost (i'm sure it's subsidized, education almost always is), but that does include books. the amount of debt people graduate with almost certainly includes living expenses as well, which are incurred whether or not the person is in school.

in shadowrun, if you don't even really care how much the person actually understands, you could probably train them even less than that. sure, doctors cost a lot to train (though i rather suspect VR has brought the cost for training in almost anything down an awful lot), but then again, not everyone is a doctor.

and more to the point, if a person with skillwires is more than 10 times the cost of a drone with autosofts (and it's looking suspiciously like that is exactly the case), then you have no need for the person regardless. if you're just getting non-creative work done by corporate drones, you may as well use actual drones which can be just as versatile, most likely have much lower maintenance expenses, won't ever have loyalty issues, and cost a mere fraction of the amount.

remember, this is a setting where an almost humanoid drone can be purchased for 4,500 nuyen. no hands, but unless hands are going to cost more than 55,000 nuyen (assuming only chipjack; add another 60k for workers with skillwires), we're already ahead of the game. and that's before you factor in the cost for autosofts being lower (provided the missions emergency errata is the same as what the eventual official errata will be).

and if it's a position that doesn't require activesofts, you can likely even get away with an agent running a virtual persona and some appropriate autosofts.

$8-9 thousand for the degree, which might be subsidized, but also living expenses for 2 years, etc. I'm not talking about tuition fees, I'm talking about overall investment in the education, which includes food and board costs while you get the person from "applicant" to "on the job." You do have a good point that many technical jobs that would require skillwires are actually a much shorter and cheaper education that I've been talking about. I imagine technical work (programers, drone maintenance, etc) is actually a booming industry in the 2070s.

An agent or pilot program is still a lot more limited than a human with a skilljack and a chipped profession. Shadowrun is a setting with cheap robots but, but no mass produced AI of quality. Skilljacks will keep you from developing or building on your knowledge, but the user still gets to apply that knowledge and make decisions. The question of drones/agents replacing people (skilljacked or otherwise) hinges more on the lack of decent AI in Shadowrun, in my opinion.

You do, however, have a really good point on Tutorsofts and VR Training. I may be way overestimating the number of roles where installing a $60,000 rating 3 skilljack or $160,000 rating 4 skilljack/skillwire combo is more cost effective than education, but then I really like the idea of a heavily chipped corporate drone work force in shadowrun. To each their own, of course.

This post has been edited by BlackJaw: Aug 13 2013, 04:32 PM

[Jaid]

a drone really isn't notably worse in shadowrun. at most, you might need to have a human overseer (who does not actually need to have a control rig or anything like that, though it certainly wouldn't hurt)

i mean, a human rolls attribute + skill. a drone rolls pilot + autosoft. they can have very comparable dice pools. if the drone ever runs into problems, then you just kick it up to the human overseer (the number of overseers needed may vary, but one should be able to cover quite a few drones since those problems won't come up constantly).

[BlackJaw]

a drone really isn't notably worse in shadowrun. at most, you might need to have a human overseer (who does not actually need to have a control rig or anything like that, though it certainly wouldn't hurt)

i mean, a human rolls attribute + skill. a drone rolls pilot + autosoft. they can have very comparable dice pools. if the drone ever runs into problems, then you just kick it up to the human overseer (the number of overseers needed may vary, but one should be able to cover quite a few drones since those problems won't come up constantly).

Actually the game makes a point of noting on page 269 that Dog-Brains "hardly makes up for a metahuman brain." I've personally always taken it as an inherent feature of robots in shadowrun that they aren't very smart, which is why there are still so many people around in roles like security guard, or basic admin. Should the corps ever figure out how to really make AI, and they are constantly hunting down the rogue "real" AIs so they can study them, then it would be a real game changer for the society and literally for the game. One I actually don't want in the setting.

As it stands right now, I figure you can probably get by with a virtual receptionist, but not a virtual administrative assistant. Your administrative assistant, however, may be chipped instead of having a BA in business/etc. Their social skills, however, are probably real skills they've picked up through experience and life, which is how they have any chance of getting a marginally better job. But, once again, that's my opinion on the dystopia. Your millage can, and probably does, vary.

[Mal-2]

It's "beat cop".

If you insist!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well just for a Bachelors: Private Four-Year Not-For-Profit College: National Average: $85,296 per year.

Entertaining Number, since I only spent just at $10,000 In the University of Texas Education System for my 5 Year Education Plan. (1991-1996). Even in Denver, a Reputable Private Institution is only about $48,000/Year ($24,000/Semester); of course, that was a couple of years ago. I am sure there are others out there, to be sure, that run in the Hundreds of Thousands of dollars per year, but $85,000/Year sounds a bit excessive for an Average (of course they are Private Institutions you are talking about). Especially since I know at least two individuals who graduated last year with a total of under $50,000 in loans for their 4 year education (Including their cost of living figured).

PRIVATE institutions are probably not the best price point to be comparing against, when talking about an Education, in my opinion. Unless you think that Private Institutions are the only place you can get a Real Education. *shrug* (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

[Epicedion]

Entertaining Number, since I only spent just at $10,000 In the University of Texas Education System for my 5 Year Education Plan. (1991-1996). Even in Denver, One of the best Private Institutions is only about $48,000/Year ($24,000/Semester); of course, that was a couple of years ago. I am sure there are others out there, to be sure, that run in the Hundreds of Thousands of dollars per year, but $85,000/Year sounds a bit excessive for an Average (of course they are Private Institutions you are talking about). Especially since I know at least two individuals who graduated last year with a total of under $50,000 in loans for their 4 year education.

PRIVATE institutions are probably not the best price point to be comparing against, when talking about an Education, in my opinion. Unless you think that Private Institutions are the only place you can get a Real Education. *shrug* (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

The cost of education has been going up by an obscene amount per year, and your number is 20 years old at this point.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

The cost of education has been going up by an obscene amount per year, and your number is 20 years old at this point.

For me, yes, but not for the two recent graduates, clocking in at roughly $12,000/year. Care to explain that $73,000 discrepancy? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Sendaz]

For me, yes, but not for the two recent graduates, clocking in at roughly $12,000/year. Care to explain that $73,000 discrepancy? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Beer money?

[Epicedion]

For me, yes, but not for the two recent graduates, clocking in at roughly $12,000/year. Care to explain that $73,000 discrepancy? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

His numbers are wrong, for one. The average cost for a public institution in the US is closer to $16,000 per year for a four-year school. Private institutions come in at about $33,000 per year.

If the current trend holds, that will go up by about 40% per decade, so the costs would look like:

2020: 22,400
2030: 31,360
2040: 43,904
2050: 61,465.60
2060: 86,051.84
2070: 120,472.58

Private schools tend to run about twice as much as public schools (though the cost-increase trend is slightly lower), so you would expect a private school in 2070 to run about $200,000 a year.

The best dollars-to-nuyen conversion that I can find puts the (UCAS) dollar at about 4 to 1 nuyen, so a private school would run about 50,000 nuyen per year, or 200,000 nuyen for a full 4 year education -- with the public school being about 120,000 nuyen for the full 4 years.

This puts a Rating 6 Skilljack at comparable to the cost of a public education, and Rating 6 Skilljack + Rating 6 Skillwires at comparable to the cost of a private education, for a Bachelor's equivalent.

[shinryu]

my guess as to who really gets skillwires: poor orks and trolls.

well, the poor in general, actually, but these two groups in particular.

ever see those commericals for crapulent, over-priced schools that teach you to be a nursing assistant, and also how to default on student loans when the sub-par education you received fails to land you a job? the ones with the disproportionate number of female minorities in the commericals? skillwires are like that, except they work.

given the systemic discrimination against these two groups, it's hard to imagine you see a lot of orks and trolls at the university of washington or UCLA unless they somehow issued from a legacy's loins. hell, even the corps probably have a big weighting factor towards "corpsec" when they calculate your ASVAB (Ares Standardized Vocational Aptitude Battery, of course...) if you happen to be of the tusky persuasion and not otherwise very, very talented. so the best chance for an ork or a troll to get out of the ghetto is likely to get themselves some wires and go into debt. used wires really aren't that expensive, necessarily, and they're the one thing that can almost guarantee employment if you're not a completely obvious criminal.

orks and trolls have the secondary impetus of having a shorter lifespan to worry about; i imagine there's a great deal of thought along the lines of not wanting to waste four years in college (even if you can get in to said college), or the drive to makes your money and get your leonization (got to be getting cheaper every year, right?). there's also the cognitive difficulties that trolls are saddled with to consider, making the idea of a troll skillwire affirmative action plan (read: we wire 'em up and give 'em guns!) a perversely plausible and perversely hilarious idea.

so i imagine you see a lot of say, wired ork mechanics responsible for servicing the army of drones that do the actual work. "your job will be to service these tiny robots that fight in space, or at the top of a very high mountain."

dumb question: would you need to actually have skillwires to drive vehicle skills through a control rig? seems like that's all in the motor cortex. i guess you might need that part of the skillwires, then, but it seems like having a pud with skillsofts and a control rig is a very efficient way to spider your factory floor, or to let your driver also be your pilot.

[BigGreenSquid]

Well just for a Bachelors: Private Four-Year Not-For-Profit College: National Average: $85,296 per year.

The corps sending their citizens to one of their own colleges would be more likely the $25,588 per year as it would be comparable to an instate public school. Also, a corp wouldn't give a rats a$$ about giving a well rounded education. Your there on a biotech scholarship, don't even think of registering for a liberal arts class, or any other task not directly related to your field. That being the case, it would probably be closer to the Palm Beach State College (Florida) range of $7,960 per year. Finally, without all the extra crap you have to take, like humanities, one could complete Bachelor's in Biotech degree in roughly half the time.

[Slide]

the current prices on schools are supper inflated. but I'll leave my real life societal commentary for another site and go about my fake life societal commentary here.

But what are the limits of a skill wire set? For task like say welding, pip fitting, carpentry, masonry, shooting, kickboxing.... I could imagine how that would work. But say my job as a power plant technician, or what some one said earlier about detectives, that require large amounts of analytic thought..... Well I guess that's the real limit. Thought.

[Voran]

Side note, Continuum the tv series had an episode similar to this topic, unnamed detention facility of dissidents, tried and sentenced to be meat puppets on an assembly line, with 'skillwires' for the task.

[Sendaz]

Servitors in Warhammer 40K are extreme examples of this as well, being pretty much lobotomized organic bots by that point.

[BigGreenSquid]

Ever hear of Skill Hardwires?

I'll bite, what is a skill hardwire? Its it homebrew or in an older source book?

[Tzeentch]

Skill hardwires were in the original Street Samurai's Handbook. I don't have the newer books on hand to check if they showed up later.

[BigGreenSquid]

Skill hardwires were in the original Street Samurai's Handbook. I don't have the newer books on hand to check if they showed up later.

Wow, I'm gonna have to go digging in the boxes of old books for that one. Short version, what is it?