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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

From: Chris Siebenmann <cks@********.UTCS.TORONTO.EDU>
Subject: Getting hired, some thoughts:
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1993 18:26:35 -0400
How *do* those nasty Shadowrunner types find those nasty illegal jobs
they need to keep body and soul together, or at least the rent money
paid, without getting arrested by the cops or burned or something even
worse? Well, here's my take on the second most dangerous part of the
job: getting hired.

There's a bunch of general ways you can get a job, going from least
desirable to most:

- The cattle call. Just like in the movies, the news goes out that
someone's hiring, go to place X and talk to them. This is risky for
both sides; you never know who you'll get, and auditioning
Shadowrunners is nowhere as near as easy as auditioning actors.
Generally you only get new, green runners who have no better
prospects, and it's very noisy. Johnsons going this route want
either cheap, inexperienced, or expendable people, or all of the
above.
If you have a rep, this is generally a waste of time.

- "I want YOU": A Johnson wants to hire you specifically. At least he
knows who you are, but you gotta wonder what he's heard and why he's
picking you. FASA seems to think this is the most common way people
get hired, but I'm not sure I agree; it implies that a lot of people
know about your Shadowrunning rep, and that implies the cops do too.
Going this route is more upscale, and you can probably count on the
Johnson to pick decent people if you don't recognize them yourself.
Probably.

- The connections fixer: a Johnson gets a team together on a fixer's
recommendation. The fixer just serves to put people together; to a
certain extent his rep's on the line, and you can trust him to that
extent. Fixers who constantly refer people to bum runs and bum
Johnsons stop having people to refer, and sometimes they stop
breathing.
Being on one of these fixer's 'strings' is a step out of the
cesspool; if he's good (ie, runs he puts teams together for are
successful), you're probably gonna get good regular work. You've
gotta have a rep to get in with him, and because you meet the
Johnson directly you may need a public rep as well.

- The team leader: a Johnson hires a 'runner to put together and lead
a team for him, but you all still talk directly to the Johnson. Here
you get to trust the team leader to pick good people who can work
together, and it's axiomatic that a) his skin is on the line too and
b) you know more about him than the Johnson.
I rank this better than a connections fixer because a team leader
has more on the line.

- The fixer: a Johnson hires a fixer to get a run done, and he
subcontracts. The big advantage here is that you never have to deal
with the Johnson; he doesn't have to know you, you don't need a rep
that he has to hear of, and the fixer is a professional.
When you get runs like this, you've got it made -- but make sure the
fixer you deal through is reputable. A reputable fixer won't
sacrifice his 'runners unless he's planning to retire, because
they're his stock in trade.

- The cutout team leader: Like above, but the fixer is also the team
leader. This is the best, because the team leader has an obvious big
motive to not get you into a bad situation.

Why not deal direct with a Johnson? Well:
- Johnsons are often new to the biz. They don't understand the rules
of the Street, and they don't know your preferences and limitations
(everyone has some sort of jobs they just won't do). This leads them
to say or do stupid things on a depressingly regular basis.

A corollary: new Johnsons don't understand how to communicate
information in non-revealing ways, such as through the pay they
offer (if you're getting offered five times the going rate to scrag
a warehouse, there's something dangerous in it). They may not
understand the pay scale at all, and get indignant about it. This
can lead to bad blood, either because you refuse to touch the job
after you commit and hear more details, or you feel the Johnson's
lied to you about the difficulty when you find stuff out during the
job.

- Johnsons can wind up worried that you know more about them than is
healthy -- for them. With a cutout, at the worse they'll just kill
the cutout, and at best they'll trust the cutout's rep.

Corollary: On the Street, you live and die by your rep, especially
your rep for keeping your word and keeping quiet.

- A Johnson has nothing much to lose by lying to you through his
teeth. So he can't hire from the Street any more, big deal. So his
ass is grass out of Corp territory -- he may never leave again. A
fixer has a lot more to lose, as a minimum his business, and so is
less likely to lie to you and should be picking the people he
accepts jobs from carefully -- and he has more information sources
in corps than you probably do.

- A fixer worth his salt never puts together suicide jobs, or plans to
expend a team, because he knows the consequences. Johnsons often
don't, or think they're immune -- and sometimes they are.

- If you deal with a fixer, the fixer will have done all the homework
first, and extracted the maximum information from the Johnson
beforehand. You won't have to do time-consuming go-arounds or lots
of argument to get vital info.

- Fixers rarely micromanage. A subset of Johnsons insist on looking
over your shoulder constantly (which tells them far too much, often
stuff they can use to blackmail you with later), or even worse try
to give you orders about your business. Constantly.

- A fixer is, theoretically, supposed to die before telling the
opposition who did the grunt work on a run if they decide they want
you dead. A Johnson has no such qualms.

- cks

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.