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[FuelDrop]

With the advent of Pilot software and drones, many mindless pleb jobs are performed by machines and possibly one guy acting as overseer.
Much data is collected automatically, then can be sorted by Agents.
R&D is not wage-slave work.
so, what is? What do most people in the 6th world actually do for a living?

[Jack VII]

TPS Reports

[SpellBinder]

I'd wager much the same as what's done now. Pilot programs and Agent's aren't as good as a real person who can think on their feet when something unexpected happens, and a person can take care of their own "maintenance" where a drone will need a mechanic to do the same.

TPS Reports

"Did you get the memo?" *not listening* "I'll see that you get a copy of the memo."

[FuelDrop]

Drones repairing drones, automated drone production lines...
Yeah, we're screwed.

[Dolanar]

even if an agent is doing the work, there still has to be someone watching it to make sure nothing it can't handle comes along, they aren't called DogBrains for nothing

[CanRay]

Working 12-16 hour shifts in order to prevent starving to death, typically. Or the very real threat of having their corporate SIN removed, leaving them SINless.

[FuelDrop]

Working 12-16 hour shifts in order to prevent starving to death, typically. Or the very real threat of having their corporate SIN removed, leaving them SINless.

what do they do on those shifts?

[grid.samurai]

That's a broad question. The answer differs by type of job.

[Udoshi]

Usually working tons of hours, or even just a steady 9-5 to make their paycheck, which is then spent on Insurance(corporate owned), Lifestyle(corporate owned), family(the feeding, education and entertainment of which is corporate owned), other fancy things like cars(the manufacture, maintainaince, and insurace of which is corporate owned), in exchange for the fear of losing all of the above, and being told anyone else can fill the job better, so you better not quit.

Basically ensuring the money they get paid gets spent to keep them in their place.

[thorya]

There are still some types of manufacturing work that use people, particularly those with short production runs or a lot of changes year-to-year because designing and building a drone for each new product is too expensive. Dis-assembly and sorting is still usually more cheaply done by people. Whether that's true in 2070, who knows?

Other things that still probably use some people (though many less than today):

Accounting, service jobs (I understand they've tried to fully automate a McDonald's and the results were less than spectacular), tech support (if you would like to connect with a real person, please think A now), sales people (a sales drone would be annoying as hell), social networking, legal aids, marketers, picking fruit (it's apparently very hard to design a berry or apple combine), bank employees, construction (which likely leads to a lot of lower class riggers, just thought of a new character idea), human resources, testing products, having products tested on them, auto-cad jockeys, and machinists (for specialized or custom parts, even if the tools are all computerized, someone has to input the control sequence).

They also probably spend a lot of time, synergizing, optimizing, having meetings, defining comprehensive team strategies, watching the 2070 equivalent of safety power points, goal oriented thinking, and taking action on actionable items to deliver the deliverables.

[FuelDrop]

In other words, a massive portion of the population has the primary job of talking to each other.
That strikes me as both funny and ironic, for some reason.

[thorya]

Hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, probably. I think I interact with about 4-5 people a week whose whole job is to relay communications, review others work, and approve things. And they've got a whole management layer above them and one above that. The future is now.
So keep that form filling out and paper work for the sake of checking a box somewhere and add supervising the robots or being around to fix things when they screw up and you've got SR.

[FuelDrop]

So what would the dead-end jobs of the future be? These days if you're not very good with people and aren't technically inclined you can still find work doing menial labor (among other things, I'm just looking at individuals who for whatever reason aren't inspired to be inventive with what gifts they do have)? In 2070 most of those jobs have been taken by drones.

You know, that actually justifies having living security instead of drones. Even the dullest metahuman has more initiative than a pilot program, and the corps will have a considerable workforce of less gifted individuals to choose from to act as dumb muscle. No offence to security guards, right now your job requires a lot of social interaction, attention to detail, networking to pick up trouble before it starts, plus a bunch of other stuff that routinely gets overlooked by people not doing your job. In the future, they put any dumb schmuck in a uniform and use them to slow down shadowrunners until the cops arrive. Look on the bright side: it's still too much of a skill job to simply entrust it to drones!

PS:...And I just got disowned by every security guard I ever worked with. Ever. I forgot the first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging.

[Shemhazai]

In the future, they put any dumb schmuck in a uniform and use them to slow down shadowrunners until the cops arrive.

I disagree with that point. Unemployment would high enough that many capable people would be trying to get a security gig.

[SpellBinder]

I disagree with that point. Unemployment would high enough that many capable people would be trying to get a security gig.

You forget about the turnover rate for shadowrunners breaking into everywhere.

Just how long is a security guard gonna keep his/her job if it's even suspect that said guard has been derelict in their duties?

[Draco18s]

sales people (a sales drone would be annoying as hell)

Most sales people today are drones... >..>

[Oregwath]

I don't look at it so much as what they do, but more as what they are NOT doing. The corps are not stupid, they know that a large percent of the population rallied behind a cause can topple just about anything. Some corp bean counter somewhere probably figured out the precise number at which this could happen. Let's say 28 percent for an example. The corps now know that if they keep the unemployment rate below 28 percent they will be able to keep the populace from rising up to overthrow them. It doesn't matter what they have them do, as long as they are "employed."

So by using people instead of machines they have a work force that is paid in corp script so all that money comes right back to them, they don't have to pay for new machines (these ones keep reproducing for free!), and it keeps the rabble from storming the metaphorical Bastille. Seems like a Corp-like decision.

[Jack VII]

Honestly, I always think of the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil whenever I think of wageslaves. Maybe not as anachronistic as that, but with the same basic beuracracy. Granted, Brazil was about Big Government, but Megacorps basically are that.

[Shemhazai]

You forget about the turnover rate for shadowrunners breaking into everywhere.

Just how long is a security guard gonna keep his/her job if it's even suspect that said guard has been derelict in their duties?

I still think there are many competent people available for them. Getting hit by a runner team isn't a routine thing. They can still retain their best security personnel.

[CanRay]

Honestly, I always think of the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil whenever I think of wageslaves. Maybe not as anachronistic as that, but with the same basic beuracracy. Granted, Brazil was about Big Government, but Megacorps basically are that.

Having worked in an office environment almost exactly like that for a faceless, greedy, heartless corporation...

[binarywraith]

Having worked in an office environment almost exactly like that for a faceless, greedy, heartless corporation...

Office Space is scarily accurate sometimes.

[SpellBinder]

I still think there are many competent people available for them. Getting hit by a runner team isn't a routine thing. They can still retain their best security personnel.

Yeah, their best. What about the new guys that aren't the best?

Last in, first out. Someone's gotta take the blame, so make it the new guy.

[Lantzer]

Also remember that megacorps need the wageslaves to get paid so they can buy products. Upper management won't buy all of Aztechnology's shampoo production.

For an interesting look at a possible corporate future, see "The Merchant's War" by Pohl.

[CanRay]

Office Space is scarily accurate sometimes.

I WISH I worked at IniTech! That would have been a better job!

[Blade]

From my (unofficial) "Style Over Substance" book (link in sig.)

Work

The biggest part of the day of most people, generally from 8 to 12 hours. The
availability of work depends on how unique, creative or skilled you are or, barring that,
how low you're ready to sell yourself. Generally speaking, unemployment is quite low,
and lower than it had been in the past. This is mostly due to the fact that many
people are willing to work in exchange for basic necessities that cost nearly nothing to
most megacorps. A comparison with slavery wouldn't be completely wrong.

To generalize, jobs (SINner job once again) can be broken down into different groups:

• Slaving labor: tasks requiring little to no thinking. The only reason why they
aren't all replaced by drones (apart from undeclared SINless workers who cost
even less) is that some tasks are too complex to be replaced efficiently by
drones and that a metahuman worker is still better to notice when something
goes wrong or to adapt when something is broken. Sometimes it's also because
the corps don't want to face hundred of thousands of angry employees who
suddenly lost their jobs to machines, or because the drones are expensive (for
examples most jobs that require going up and down stairs mean either using
expensive stair-adapted drones or changing the workplace to allow the drones
to operate). Hacking is also an issue, especially when the tasks are critical.
Some corps and governments also enforce the use of metahuman employees
instead of drones when a hack or a bug can lead to disastrous consequences.
Finally, some corps, and especially Renraku, don't want to face a new Arcology
incident and prefer to have metahumans employees to watch the drones

• Drone Supervision: The drones here can be actual drones or wageslaves. In
both cases the job is about making sure they do theirs. The only difference is
that real drones require technical skills while metahuman employees require
communication skills. And the former don't hate you. It's generally paid better
and more interesting than slaving labor, but in some places where drones are
widely used, they're the lowest jobs available. Usually in those cases the
supervisor only has a few drones under his supervision and there will be many
of them down the line (for the same reasons other corps will use metahuman
employees to do all the work).

• Dull office jobs: a slightly bit higher in the chain in that you need to know how
to read and write and use your brain a little. I have to say I still don't know
exactly what all these people are doing but corps require a whole lot of them
filling paperwork that nobody will ever care about. You can't have agents doing
this because of security issues (it's harder to hack a human employee and even
if you do hack one, you can't compromise the whole system) and because of
the fear of the Deus syndrome.

I've got the impression that some corps hand out such jobs in order
to get enough employees (and/or citizen) to meet some criteria. I swear
some of these offices are organized in the less efficient way a human mind
can think of.
>>
No it's just bureaucracy. That's why I cringe every time I hear
someone say that corps are lean and mean super-optimized business
machines driven by the profit-line. They're huge and clumsy mammoth
who only survive thanks to their layer of fats they got when they were
successful and the fact that they can crush down any opposition and eat
what's left.
>>
From what I've seen in one corp (ESUS) it's a mix of people in the
higher ups creating low-paid (and sometimes highyl-paid) but steady
positions for their unskilled family/friends/relatives and managers whose
budgets and/or salaries are based on the number of people they manage.
That and some laws that are supposed to protect the Middle Class.
>>

• Interesting office jobs: people there use their brains and do a meaningful
work. They can be specialists or managers or Ghost knows what else. There are
still opportunities there for people with the right education and, in some cases,
the right family/metatype/state of mind. It's more interesting and the pay is
higher, but the challenge are greater too. You don't just have to face the petty
offices pranks and politics absurdities but you have to swim with sharks. And let
me tell you that shadowrunning sometimes feels safe and worry-free compared
to some corporate work environment.

Is that all? It feels like some jobs are missing in that list.
>>
Yeah, I know but this covers about 80% of them and I didn't want to
create dozens of categories for the remaining 20%. It's probably missing a
whole lot of non-corporate jobs.
>>

Though it could theoretically be done for a lot of jobs, telecommuting
isn't that common. There are huge security issues due to encryption problems, and
even a complete and realistic VR office doesn't work as well as the real physical
location to make the employees feel part of the company. This doesn't prevent many
executive managers to telecommute often, or some employees to go to a physical
office somewhere in order to telecommute to work somewhere else on the planet,
appearing in AR to her colleagues there. In some corps, sick employees can
telecommute to work to avoid spreading their diseases.

I don't understand how corps can say on one hand that security
issues prevents telecommuting but on the other hand that banking is safe.
>>
Seriously? Are we stil there? Short answer: not the same kind of
data exchange (single shot vs session), not the same detection/tracking
methods and not the same scale for security.
>>

In a lot of corps, the workplace is more than just the place where you work. It's also
where you eat your lunch (at least), where you get your hair cut, where you go to the
gym and so on. But we'll have more on that later.

[[Working in the Sixth World]
Drones and agents might have taken some jobs, but there are also new
jobs that appeared after the new technical, magical and societal changes of
the century, ignoring the obvious (wagemages and cybertechnicians for
example).
• Drone Supervision: [snip - already detailed in that article - >> Cosmo ]
• Agent support: They help the agents the same way most agents help
their users and answer questions the agents have trouble answering
without human help. So basically these people sit in an office and
receive messages such as "why would Sally prefer this toothpaste to
this better one?", "what does this drawing represent?" or "what's
written here?".
• Archivist / Neoarcheologist: The still lost data of the first crash were
getting uninteresting when the second happened, bringing back a
heavy demand of archivists. These people look for physical copies of
lost data (datachips, printings or even memories) and store them in
new databases. The most common are administrative databases
(citizenship, taxes and so on), research data and cultural goods
(music, movies and so on) but there are also some people who offer
their services directly to customers (finding your lost family pictures
for example) or who specialize in some niche (newspaper articles,
dirty secrets, celebrity-related data and so on)
• Animal trainers: The growing use of cybered/para-critters has led to a
rise of the demand for trainers.
• Matrix Sculptors: Matrix sculptors don't just carve a nice VR/AR
environment and don't just design a Matrix system and its security.
They do both. Sculpting a node to be intuitive, pretty, secure and
efficient is complicated, even more so when you have to do an AR
version. Not all Matrix nodes are done by sculptors, but those that are
often technical feats as well as work of arts.
• Life-feeders: Life feeders are people, independent or on contract, who
record their daily lives and sell the sims recording to spectators. This
can be done for entertainment or educational purposes, and the lives
can be real or staged but it has to feel real.
• Video games Player: It has taken a few years from the first video
games to the first professional video gaming leagues, and even longer
for these leagues to get the same recognition and following as
professional sports leagues.
• Jukebox: Jukeboxes are chipped jack-of-all-trades. Every time the
corp has a shortage of workforce in one department, they just get a
jukebox, chip her with the right activesoft and off she goes. Some
jukebox are implanted to make sure they don't recall anything they did
once the job is done. Jukebox miss a good part of their lives, but on
the upside it feels like they never have to work!