Yes, you can have special grunt squads made of lieutenants. Yes, you can have armies of combat drones, swarms of high force spirits, trillion dollar men. What I am saying is that while it is possible to have all these things guarding their objective but the runners do not necessarily need to circumvent these defenses, they can sledgehammer through them instead if indeed they are that capable.

Besides, the explosives are set up in the room above the mages and hackers who are controlling the drones and high force spirits. And the runners hold the detonator.

There is a large distinction between the forces a corp can bring to bear and what they'll have guarding a site. In part just because sitting around isn't a good use. And also because it can put them at a massive disadvantage.

Even if their purpose is guarding something few would be right at the objective. Instead most would be somewhere close. Ready to close in and engage on their terms.

In short permenent guards tend to be light. What a corp can call in when it needs it however is not.

That is one way of defending your facility and I am not saying it is wrong. It has advantages and disadvantages to it.
For example, what if your response force gets ambushed? That is a massive disadvantage. If you take a circuitous route, then they would not be able to response as quickly. If they are somewhere close, then it is less difficult to neutralise both sites. Whatever tactic you choose to use has its own set of disadvantages to it. The site holding the response force becomes an objective in its own right. What if the runners are hired to attack this guard force? They are the objective.

I do not try to dictate the way my players should play the game. I provide the game world and I control the NPCs. How the players choose to interact with my world is up to them. Going in with all guns blazing is as valid as sneaking in. A gun bunny is as valid and as useful as a ninja.

Here is my way (which is of course the right way to play, everyone who disagrees play Shadowrun wrong and even if they have fun, it's a wrong kind of fun)

1. There is a consistent world: The world is clearly defined. The physics rules and any other rules are defined (except for magic which rules are a bit fuzzy, but that's officially because we don't know enough about it). More importantly: the NPCs (individual and groups) of my games are defined. They have their story, their attributes, their personality... And they act and react accordingly.

2. There are consistent rules: The rules are clearly defined too, even if they can be twisted to better reflect what should be happening (for example a shot in the head of a normal human at point blank range will be fatal if no Edge is spent). The consistency of rules is second to the consistency of the world (if the rules say the plane falls but it's against physics, the rules will be ignored) but comes before the expected narrative (if I decided that Mr. X will be the Big Bad but he's killed by a lucky roll at the beginning of the campaign, I'll let him die and see how the story unfolds without him). Edge is there to mitigate the effect of disastrous dice rolls, so there's no need to "cheat" outside the rules.

3. May the PC live interesting lives: Even if rule number 1 means that the PC won't necessarily be the center of the universe, they have to have interesting things to do. That's why the story will always involve them somehow and the likelihood that demons of the past or other similar elements will come back might be higher than what would realistically be expected.
For example, even if according to the situation there wouldn't be many shadowruns, the PC won't stay unemployed for too long (except if they have something to do during that time).

1+2+3: The PCs are in a specific situation at a specific place and moment in time. They'll be involved in something interesting. They will act, and the world will react accordingly, in the most realistic way (at least to me). Rules will decide on how some events turn out. It's kind of an impartial GMing since once everything is set in motion the PC, the world and the rules decide what happens. There's little to no railroading, little to no Deus Ex Machina or other GM intervention. Even if that could potentially lead to uninteresting situations, I've never seen such a thing happening. Sure, you might no get that showdown at dawn at the top of the burning corporate tower but maybe you'll get something even better and in any case, your players will get what they worked for.
The only downside I can see is how much work it means for the GM both during and between the sessions.

My Shadowrun GM philosophies:

1. Make sure everyone is having fun. If everyone isn't having fun, I have failed.
2. Make sure everyone knows the rules of the game. It isn't necessary for a player to know about Magic when all he cares about is playing Hackers but he should know all the rules of Hacking.
3. The core rules (and errata) are sacrosanct but are open to interpretation if they are not clear so long as the interpretation is logical.
4. Be stingy with equipment. Just because the rules say mil-spec gear is available doesn't mean an NPC has to sell it to him. The PC may not have the reputation to warrant the risk to the NPC.
5. Vary rewards from nuyen, to equipment, to medical treatments, to stocks, etc.
6. Make sure every PC has his 15 minutes in the sun.
7. Be stingy with karma. Only award it if it's earned. If a character was not challenged by an adventure he should not receive as much karma. This helps to curb power gaming.
8. In the event of power creeping/munchkin players, keep the power gamer occupied by a single task (ie: hold off the natives while the cowboys escape) while the rest of the team does its thing. Also be flexible and allow for multiple approaches to completing a task.
9. When a PC's character reaches a certain public awareness level, that character is retired. No arguments.
10. Don't make adventure critical information accessible only to one character and don't set up an encounter so that only one character can solve it. Think like a video game programmer and devise a process tree in your mind that accounts for varying methodologies.
11. Respect your players.
12. Expect your players to respect the time you put into pre-planning an adventure.
13. Require that all players be at the table and pay attention. And leave The Wives and The Boyfriends at home if possible.
14. Help struggling PCs to figure out how to make the best of their characters or even help them re-create them to fit their playing styles.
15. All career paths, from street sams to technomancers, and metatypes/species, from elves to AIs, are beautiful. Figure out how to make it work.
16. This is Shadowrun, not Cyberpunk. Keep it tongue-in-cheek in places and don't get too grim with the tone. For God's sake, you've got an elf with a machine gun... how can you take that too seriously?
17. Don't let the PCs get complacent. If they're spending nuyen on tech but not keeping up an appropriate lifestyle, have them get robbed of a valuable piece of tech or a magical artifact from time to time. You can't be a squatter and expect to keep mil-spec weapons in your cardboard box.
18. Fully develop NPC contacts. You never know when they'll return.
19. Fudge rolls when dealing with large group combat to get through it faster but NEVER let the PCs know this. That is until Catalyst publishes a new version of DMZ or a mass combat rules addition.
20. Pay attention to your PCs. They often have interesting tidbits in their histories that make for good adventure springboards.

Mine:

0. It's EVERYONE's job to make sure that EVERYONE has fun. This means being considerate of other people's wished but also to clearly say what you want yourself. It's not only the GM's job to make everyone happy.

1. We're here to play toegether. Not "me and the players" but "we players". Every player (including the GM) has the same rights - a GM is nothing more than a player. A GM can of course make quick decisions during the game to keep the game going (instead of drifting off in a rules discussion, for example), but if someone (including the GM) wants a rule changed, he cannot simply rule it, he can just propose it. Of course, every player (including a GM) has the right not to play if he doesn't like how something is going.

2. The rules and the setting are just a suggestion. They are not holy words written in stone. If the group wants to change the rules or the setting, the should do so. It someone wants to propose playing a heavily modified setting, he may do so. This of course means, that there is no "correct" way to play Shadowrun. Every group has to find it's own way. If some people want to play Cyber-Gods, let them. If other people want to play street scum with butter knives, let them. Just remember one thing:

The group should make sure that all members want to play the same game. (and this means you don't only have to decide to play Shadowrun, but also HOW you want to play it).

3. The GM delievers the surroundings - it's the player's job to do something with it. Of course the GM can include plots, etc. but if the players don't want to follow it, great. The players should make their own goals and not try to blindly follow the road the GM built for them.

4. The world should be consistent. Gangs don't suddenly become better just because the players would be to powerfull otherwise. Birds don't stark flying backwards just because otherwise the GM's plot wouldn't work.

5. The GM should make the world an interessting and fun place for the players (this doesn't mean it has to be nice or fun for the chars!).

Now that we're back to lists I thought of something that I'm surprised hasn't come up. Maybe most people don't do it.

Encourage the PCs to have real lives with their characters. If all they ever do is interact with a mission with numbers all they are is numbers. Give them some time for other stuff.

I find this not only serves to seriously improve role play but it also works out great at sessions.

Usually at the start of a session we'll do "life" stuff. You know how it is. You've got a couple players just wanting to play and a couple who are late. So start off with something else. Sometimes players will take the initiative. Like wanting to trick out a bike and go racing. Sometimes you throw someone something. A secret admirer, maybe a go gang is bothering people in their neighborhood, maybe they pick up a girl at a bar. Sometimes you can float something and see if they bite. Maybe they see someone that looks like they're going to jump off of a building. Will they get involved or just walk away? If they do get involved what can they do?

Completely resist the temptation to make the jumper into a suicidal dragon in human form or something. These are short character development bits.

I also do stuff like that at the end of the session. Again this serves as some nice padding if the run is done but people don't feel like going home just yet, however you don't have all that much time. Or maybe a couple people left and a couple people stayed.

This is also a great way to bring people out of a shell and develop some RP skills if you've got a wallflower or roll player.

Also I'm betting that if I called up some people from one of my groups from years ago they'll remember a lot of that stuff where they may have forgot about more than a few runs.

I like the idea of using left over game time for character development role-playing. But I'm curious. How far does one take the short character development bits? When I'm running a group campaign I find it difficult to squeeze in character development segments while the rest of the group just sits and twiddles its collective thumbs. Usually, my character development is directly linked in to my ongoing campaign in only a superfluous way. For example, the Yakuza uncle needs his PC nephew to grab a technomancer who has been digitally robbing his casino. PC nephew brings in the team to help. The uncle, while removing the Johnson from the equation and adding a bit of character back story to the PC, still serves just as a Johnson. I don't think I could even run a five minute bit with one PC going on a coffee bar date with the cute ork from up the block (roll Charisma + Seduction to charm her then roll Stength + Gymnastics group for sex performance!) without the rest of my players getting bored or feeling like I was playing favorites.

How have you other GMs handled this kind of thing?

I guess I haven't had a problem with it. First of all often I find I just have some time with a single or small number of people at the beginning and end of sessions. Not even that everyone left. Maybe they're still eating or I've awarded karma and payed them and now the others are busy scheming what to do with it.

But beyond that I find people are just willing to put up with someone else having the spotlight a moment if they get it too. Remember you aren't doing a half hour extraveganza with one person. Also you don't have to finish one persons story and then move on.

In your example a person might go out on a date. You do some minimal role playing with them. Move on to the next. Eventually get back to the first. Chat a little bit more, see where the night is heading (seduction roll?). Then move on to the person trying to figure out who sent them roses. Eventaully back to the date person and then maybe you can have some kinda performace roll. Move on. Come back and see if they're going to try and extricate themselves or stay the night and cuddle.

You and your players are probably already comfortable with that format as it's how you handle the runs likely. I found it worked out pretty seemlessly.

Also I don't know about you but I've found that at the beginning and end of a session people aren't always focused on the game yet. Makes sense. You're friends, maybe someone is curious how they're doing, did they see that new movie, whatever. A little RP light fare means that they're into the game by the time the Johnson calls.

For my first group, I had them all live in the same place. It was a building built in the remnant of an old arcology project that didn't go very far. It was hard to find, and the inhabitants had a lot of tricks to make sure it stayed so. Most of those who lived here were hiding from one thing or another. The rent wasn't too high, but the PC had to help the community.
From time to time, they'd meet their neighboors (there were about 50 of them complete with backstory, personality and sometimes some plot hooks, from the guy with a terrible secret to the ork teen who was troubled to discover she was in love with a human). As everyone lived there, they could all pay attention to what happened in there to any other group member. They also did a lot of things together, like celebrating christmas with the all female team leaving one floor down (or up I don't remember). It was fun to see players asking to speak with the GM in private to plot about... what they'd get another character for christmas!
Also everyone was quite interested in whatever the others were doing so they didn't mind if I spent some time with one player and most of the time listened to it all...

Sunnyside pretty much hit this one on the head. Break it up into smaller scenes, while the rest of the action is going on. Do it during downtime in game; after you've assigned karma, while everyone else is spending their points, you can do some roleplay. Just add an extra five-minute scene here and there.

There's one trick I sometimes do, but it isn't always viable for all groups. If you have a girlfriend or SO or other observer, who understands the general concept of roleplay but doesn't want to get into the game, for whatever reason, have them play the NPC for you. They get to handle the dialogue and interaction, but you're the one who controls the stats and dice. Give them some ideas on how you think the character should be played, and let them run with it. For pure dialogue, you can even just leave the two alone, and focus on something else for a bit.

Granted, there's a lot of "If's" involved in this setup. Even if you have access to extra people, they may not understand acting well enough to be of much help, or might have their own ideas about things. You have to play it by ear, and carefully judge what kind of characters they can handle.

But if you do it right, you've just exponentially increased the roleplay opportunities in your game. One girl was so good, she ended up running a long-term NPC for me, that led to a major shocker as she ultimately betrayed the team. Others weren't as good, but it did add a new dimension to the game. For example, on an extraction run, I had an observer play the secretary they were after. That made her into more than another NPC; it really stepped up the game. Even if you've got someone who can't do much, or be trusted with much, you can still use them. My ex-wife was a problem roleplayer, even when you could get her interested in a game. However, she could do a hilarious Pakistani accent, so she got used as the cashier at a Stuffer Shack. That scene ended up being a lot of fun.

I've got mixed feelings on making them all live together. It's a classic tactically sound setup. So it happens a lot. But sometimes players really appreciate their chance to shine as an indavidual, even if it's only a handful of five minute bits. Seriously, call them back after five years. It'll be that 15 minutes they remember not the four hours of regular play. Though I guess they can always split up.

Not that doing stuff together isn't fun. May players decided to thow a block party and invited a lot of the local Lone Star officers. Figuring steak now might pay off later. Good times.

But something in what Blade said, being connected is great. Back in old editions I'd generally give my team a set of subvocal mikes and such for free just so they could instantly include each other if they wanted to. These days players usually have that ability by default.

If somebody wants to include the others they can just start recording video from their eyes/glasses, turn on the comlinks mic and transmit. Then listen and communicate through their datajack or whatever.