Actually,CDPR took a little of artistic freedom in Corpo Path.For somebody working in internal security/counter-intel I would have expected a kill switch,explosives attached in the brain or something like that so if you loose your job you are basically dead.
That is pretty well stablished in tabletop,novels and even in the "Syndicate" series you can see agents detonating or the executive beeing killed in case of failure.
But I can imagine the rage of starting the game with one extra timer or directly dead.
I can imagine it would be possible to remove it or deactivated it yourself as something SOME (especially player characters) would have picked up in along the ways doing all the internal security/counter-intel stuff.
Same way some security experts in RL learn how to open handcuffs they my get locked in or sweep for room "bugs" or deactivate ankle monitors:

HACKERS CAN DISABLE HOUSE ARREST ANKLE BRACELET WITHOUT RAISING ALERT
Research is showing how easy it is to hack electronic monitoring bracelets without alerting the police processes, by spoofing the bracelet's GPS receiver.

It only takes a clever person with a bit of luck to find ways around even the most high tec security: