[LORE] Question: Corpo earnings in CP Red/2020?

[CS554]

How people are paid in corporations?

AFAIK higher level corpos can get benefits like Trauma silver and higher but how much they earn as money and / or do they get shares (something like .001%). In general how much they actually own and how much is tied to their work in corporation in one way or another?

 

[Didacgomez]

Is like real life, is not the same an office worker than Saburo Arasaka... CP2020 provided some tables based on the "Corporate" special ability level (which mimicke how high you are in the corporate ladder), for a level one(assistant) is 1.5k/month for level 10(division head) 12k/month (adjust your inflation at 2045,2077 and take into account that the rules were writtent in the 90's).
But you also get benefits as meal vouchers for low-level employees, you can live in a corpo complex with and appartment owned by the company-the rental,might be substracted from your salary- with different sizes based on your rank (in CP2020 lore they were called "beavervilles") or another complex of villas owned by the company. Normal beavervilles include malls,restaurants etc for company only members at disccount (so money recirculates to the company). Night City supplement and Firestorm supplement provides some background of this beavervilles.
For high level executive, I can imagine that shares is much more than money (its not unusual, that most of compensation of executive is shares based not cash based even nowadays). For low-level employees, I can imagine a company shares buying program where you can put part of your salary in shares of the company that normally are guaranteed you can sell at no loss (the company rebuys them).

Basically, the Corpo lifepath intro its quite faithful that basically out of the Corpo you loose almost all (and yes, in real life you can loose shares granted by the company depending on how the grant is written because they are not truly yours until several years of employment).

 

[brannonb]

I think it's interesting to consider who most people in a cyberpunk setting would call a "Corpo." Obviously a ton of people work for corporations. The clerk at the Buck-a-Slice works for a corporation. People who work in the warehouses. Janitors.

But generally when I think of that term, I'm picturing suits. People who are in at least middle-tier office roles, or for people in other jobs (like warehouses or factories) I figure the managers are corpos and the workers are not?

So, to you, what is it that makes one person who works for a corporation a "Corpo" and another person just a working stiff?

 

[Didacgomez]

I would tend to think about any white-collar employee that has some freedom in implementing company policies/strategies,for sure people who have direct reports to them.Still open how wide you extent that,but not a janitor or normal secretary(but probably yes a direction secretary).

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

How people are paid in corporations?

AFAIK higher level corpos can get benefits like Trauma silver and higher but how much they earn as money and / or do they get shares (something like .001%). In general how much they actually own and how much is tied to their work in corporation in one way or another?

in red, most corpos benefits are tied to the corporation, and their job there.
healthcare
quality of living
security
living space

it appears comparitively little of the value they receive is in direct money.
Red's economy is primarily item driven.

but if you look at hustles, you'll see a corpo only takes a little bit home in cash. 600-800 a week. top end.
low end, your talking 200-300 a week.

its not that much higher than other roles, but they don't have to pay for rent, or Healthcare.

a tough edgerunner job pays way better.

overall. its pretty heavily implied that corporations want them to be dependent on the corporation. In 2077, this still appears to be the case, both V and frank seem to have almost nothing to show for it when things go bad. And takemura come to think of it.

 

[Didacgomez]

Yeah,"corpo" lifestyle is not as glamourous as people think.In CP2077 you can find a list of best corps to work in NC with the best benefits:80 hours week,33% of employees with a retirement fund and I don't recall if 5 days of paid holidays(and no single corp offered all that).
An edgerunner on the other hand,has a low life expectancy usually.

 

[horsemanuk1987]

I'd imagine, they have their base salary plus probably a performance based bonus scheme plus 'benefits in kind' things like trauma team tier membership, personal AVs, cars, accommodation, clothing etc.... Level dependant on job grade within the corporate structure.

 

[GloriousRuse]

The irony of all of it is that most of the social and economic CP "control your workers" techniques envisioned dystopian in the late 80's and early 90's all basically collapsed as financially inefficient. Ex: It turns out that even if you want to have an employee mall-ville, malls are still enterprises that cost money to run. And unless you're good at running malls, they lose money, particularly as you subsidize them, and if you try to go all command economy on them (well, I'll make sure Arasaka food goes to the food court, electronics to the store, etc.) you suffer from the vast inefficiencies of basically being a government...eventually just paying your employees is way cheaper. Or if you're Google, you know that your campuses are giant cost centers, but because all your employees are six figure types anyhow and the return on happiness for money vs benefits starts dropping.

Zaibatsu's couldn't compete with investment funds that weren't "supporting the company", but just wanted to make money. Berkshire-Hathway owns shares in both Coke and Pepsi, I assure you...

-------

Anyhow, I did find it interesting in our free corebook that an executive was paid at the same rate as a solo. And that a top end rockerboy got paid near the same. I'm guessing those tables are for balance more than "reality"

 

[Didacgomez]

Well,i don't know if they dropped the project but Facebook had plans for a company owned town 2 years ago. The rents in silicon valley are that high that they thought they can reduce salaries providing company housing and services to employees(scary isn't it?)and paying less cash.
On a personal note,I've always thought of cyberpunk economy as neo-feudalism and that system lasted looong time

 

[GloriousRuse]

Cyberpunk definitely is a weird neo-feudalism, and don't get me wrong, it's tons of fun exactly because of that. But real feudalism was challenged by proto-mercantilism (and also a plague), and it lost.

As for Facebook - in certain cases of extreme costs, it may be practical. But that doesn't change the fact it's still an extreme cost. I had a friend who became a lawyer in NYC in her twenties. The company rented her apartment, provided her a car, bought her groceries, paid for her laundry service - because they expected 80+ hour weeks and were already paying a metric ton for people with high end law degrees, and needed those people on hand making billable hours. I don't know if it all ended up being less or more than she would have made had those been salary items, but I do know that the price of those and her salary was exorbitant by the standards of most people's 20s. Much like google, this was how you retained your very best talent that you needed right here as opposed to in Atlanta or Dallas, and it was a copious expense. It was not how you drove down the cost of janitors.

 

[Didacgomez]

I can agree that if we take our own economy it probably doesn't makes sense,but in cyberpunk lore there is a string of economic crashes,plagues,wars,natural disasters that crippled most of governments and corporations. The surviving corpos were those that were bigger,more diversified and with better cash reserves.So when they wake up, basically they rewritten the rules...you dont pay anylonger >500k for a good lawyer because you have a queue of 100 unemployed ones... its a matter of demand vs availability

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

The irony of all of it is that most of the social and economic CP "control your workers" techniques envisioned dystopian in the late 80's and early 90's all basically collapsed as financially inefficient. Ex: It turns out that even if you want to have an employee mall-ville, malls are still enterprises that cost money to run. And unless you're good at running malls, they lose money, particularly as you subsidize them, and if you try to go all command economy on them (well, I'll make sure Arasaka food goes to the food court, electronics to the store, etc.) you suffer from the vast inefficiencies of basically being a government...eventually just paying your employees is way cheaper. Or if you're Google, you know that your campuses are giant cost centers, but because all your employees are six figure types anyhow and the return on happiness for money vs benefits starts dropping.

Zaibatsu's couldn't compete with investment funds that weren't "supporting the company", but just wanted to make money. Berkshire-Hathway owns shares in both Coke and Pepsi, I assure you...

-------

Anyhow, I did find it interesting in our free corebook that an executive was paid at the same rate as a solo. And that a top end rockerboy got paid near the same. I'm guessing those tables are for balance more than "reality"

in the 80s and 90s companies had less horizontal monopolies, and less megacorporations. If you are already a real estate company and an Amazon, you already solved most of the equations. Also, many of those enterprises in cyberpunk failed, but thats business, the parts that didnt fail kept going, The corporations worker controls only comes into play in corporate sector, and in this case its not just about profit, its about the fact that they weakened the government and destroy most competition. If they don't create a "society" that doesn't suck for employees, whats the point of working 70+ hours? The best apt in Watson is still trash, still dangerous, the food still sucks and you still get robbed. They have to create a quality of living for their employees because they don't have an overall decent society.


"By the 1920s, the need for company towns had declined significantly due to increased national affluence. Despite income inequalities and a relatively low standard of living conditions amongst factory laborers, the prosperity of the 1920s saw workers’ material well-being improve significantly. A strong post-war American economy meant installment buying was accessible to low-wage earners who could now purchase previously unattainable goods like automobiles and radios. Moreover, workers were no longer dependent on employers for healthcare and education."

the company town is the natural answer if the area is trash and has no options, it mostly fails due to the company itself failing, not particularly because they can't handle running a town. Also, many governments, and worker groups limit their ability to capitalize/control things.

most of the forces in the cyberpunk world make company cities more likely rather than less.
1)ineffectual/weak government
2)no unions or worker groups
3)poor quality of living in area
4)horizontal monopolies

 

[CS554]

Thanks everyone for replies! It turns out that as suspected CP Red updated rules from 2020 and those changes are important.

For me it goes back to Bruce Sterling's The Islands in the Net (1988) and how corpo's (main character for example) didn't actually had much in term of income and Red appears to make it clear that this is the vision they are going with too.

I had to ask as I have been thinking one idea and I guess I have enough to sketch something up now. I post it in a few days unless I get really lazy. Thanks again for everyone!

 

[Didacgomez]

Don't know about your idea,but maybe a real life inspiration(if you are not aware) are the Dutch and British East Indian Companies(specially the Dutch).

 

[GloriousRuse]

Without getting into things like Gini coefficients, lets just leave it to say that by the time you're at late stage service/information/long-chain manufacturing capitalism inequality skyrockets, but generally while dragging the quality of life of people up. You've essentially moved from a tiny local pie where you take the biggest slice (feudalism), to seeing if you can grab and ship everyone else's pie (early mercantilism and colonialism), to expanding the pie in your neighborhood by fueling it with cheap (often foreign) ingredients - thereby making your slice bigger in total weight by making the pie bigger in total weight even as it's relative percentage goes down (industrialism) - to where we are now where you can both make the pie bigger and your slice bigger by dominating not-technically-essential services an advanced goods that the people below you can now afford, which piles money back into expansion of the pie and consolidation of your share.

The practices that are successful in each stage are often rendered impotent by the next, or transform. Such as when our fear of the 80's horizontal monopoly backed by a Zaibatsu group and bank - Arasaka! - falls apart, but is potentially backed by a Data and Brand local monopoly like Amazon on one particular facet. Similiarly, the envisioned "1800s redux company town" foreseen by dystopian novelists of the 80s and 90s was not coming back because the sheer amount of money floating around in those companies required consumers who could actually buy an increasingly non-essential set of expanding services, not what policy types would call rent-seeking behavior.

And virtually no business can actually afford to invest in government style control apparatus, because at the size and scale we're talking, that would bankrupt virtually anyone...

-----------------

Now, do I actually care about that in a cyberpunk? Oh god no. Evil corpo feudal lords with money vs ultra violent gangbanging ghetto! I like my chances to do ultraviolence with few consequences in a neon city scape.

 

[Ayinde_Palmer]

Without getting into things like Gini coefficients, lets just leave it to say that by the time you're at late stage service/information/long-chain manufacturing capitalism inequality skyrockets, but generally while dragging the quality of life of people up. You've essentially moved from a tiny local pie where you take the biggest slice (feudalism), to seeing if you can grab and ship everyone else's pie (early mercantilism and colonialism), to expanding the pie in your neighborhood by fueling it with cheap (often foreign) ingredients - thereby making your slice bigger in total weight by making the pie bigger in total weight even as it's relative percentage goes down (industrialism) - to where we are now where you can both make the pie bigger and your slice bigger by dominating not-technically-essential services an advanced goods that the people below you can now afford, which piles money back into expansion of the pie and consolidation of your share.

The practices that are successful in each stage are often rendered impotent by the next, or transform. Such as when our fear of the 80's horizontal monopoly backed by a Zaibatsu group and bank - Arasaka! - falls apart, but is potentially backed by a Data and Brand local monopoly like Amazon on one particular facet. Similiarly, the envisioned "1800s redux company town" foreseen by dystopian novelists of the 80s and 90s was not coming back because the sheer amount of money floating around in those companies required consumers who could actually buy an increasingly non-essential set of expanding services, not what policy types would call rent-seeking behavior.

And virtually no business can actually afford to invest in government style control apparatus, because at the size and scale we're talking, that would bankrupt virtually anyone...

-----------------

Now, do I actually care about that in a cyberpunk? Oh god no. Evil corpo feudal lords with money vs ultra violent gangbanging ghetto! I like my chances to do ultraviolence with few consequences in a neon city scape.

I get your point, I just think you are underestimating how much politics intersects with that. It doesn't necessarily work the same in other countries, look at third world countries, And stuff like American corps in modern war theaters. Even though its not clearly shown in game, Night City is nothing like our America. There is no government paying for everything. They were just in a war to keep their independence from the "US" 10 years ago. The policies they put into place, don't actually increase wealth much. The political systems, and thus economies fail constantly over the last 77 years.

This is not the relatively stable first world economies we see today, with mixed economies, strong governments, and a generally placid populous. NC is closer to Iraq. CYberpunk Red outlines the different history up to 2045, and economies are extremely effected by politics. In fact all of these corps operate differently in different areas.

 

[GloriousRuse]

With the usual caveat that I don't actually care if the writers are good economists so long as I get my neon awesome...

It doesn't work the same in other countries, but those countries don't actually generate the revenue streams or the supply chains the the CP megacorporations take for granted as to why they're so big and powerful in the weak-central government world.

I think in general people really lose their conception of scale for money and supply chains once you move up to the sizes we're talking about.

Since you mentioned US firms doing the war business thing, the last 20 years have cost a little over $3T in either Overseas Contingency Operations or OCO-specific Defense spending. At peak, LOGCAP (essentially, for forum purposes, how you pay Keller-Brown-Root, Haliburton, Dynacorp, etc) contracts were $15B a year, and today's continuations are at $8.2B a year. Thats total cost amongst a minimum of four "prime vendors" given the year. As much fun as it is to declare crony capitalism, war profiteering, etc. (and there is some truth to that) the reality is that the guys hiring third-country nationals at low wages, storing them in tents at near sardine conditions, and using them to do their dirty, dull, menial work for a client who is essentially showering them with money - and by the way, in cyberpunk doesn't exist to do that because its a weak government - these guys are making chump change. Maybe $3.75B of revenue if you're really lucky. Lets imagine a ludicrous margin where half of that is profit. $1.88B.

Berkshire Hathway holds, in apple stock alone, $117B.

At $570B Amazon is valued at more than the sum total of payments to American companies involved in the war zones proper for the last 20 years.

Saudi Aramco, essentially Saudi Arabia's national oil company with the rights to all Saudi oil, was at it's highest valued at $2T (that's $2,000B). A lot of that is a global plurality of the oil supply. It has since been surpassed by Apple. The guys who sell you your Iphone are worth, give or take, 1,000 years of LOGCAP profit for a company.

It would take that evil war zone (ok, mostly they provide laundry and cooks) company 2,547 years to fund the USG FY 2020 budget. If Amazon sold every last share and asset, they could afford 1/8 of it. Selling off all of Aramco or Apple won't get you to half.

And once we get up towards the people who even have a vague chance of wielding megacorp like power, you become entirely dependent on functioning global supply chains and markets, dominated by more or less global security covering the commons, and strong rule of law combined with disposable income for billions of consumers. (There is a great paper from the 1950's called "I, pencil" that shows just how much of the world is involved in turning your pencil into the practically disposable schoolboy item.)

 

[SpookyFX]

overall. its pretty heavily implied that corporations want them to be dependent on the corporation. In 2077, this still appears to be the case, both V and frank seem to have almost nothing to show for it when things go bad. And takemura come to think of it.

Yes, thank you I was disturbed that Corpo V had not hidden ANYTHING of consequence in one of the storage units or in a buried shipping container in the desert! (I mean even the middle class people I know do that, I do anyway) I was all set (expecting) to go raid my stash as soon as Jackie and I got out of the bar...

But if V was spending most of what little in hand cash they get on luxuries and all her other expenses were paid for even her retirement accounts...

Even any "emergency funds" in case of becoming in-between jobs could be a benefit that is provided by the company "even if you are fired" (like matching 401 k funds) but the fine legal print has exceptions such as if you are caught stealing from the company! And most would NEVER do that (think they are going to steal from the company) so such "I was fired because of spilling scolding coffee on the boss but I get some money to tied me over anyway" company programs would be common.

I can see now how even a corpo could ended up poor on the streets once all the company accounts were taken away with malice!

 

[Didacgomez]

Yes, thank you I was disturbed that Corpo V had not hidden ANYTHING of consequence in one of the storage units or in a buried shipping container in the desert! (I mean even the middle class people I know do that, I do anyway) I was all set (expecting) to go raid my stash as soon as Jackie and I got out of the bar...

But if V was spending most of what little in hand cash they get on luxuries and all her other expenses were paid for even her retirement accounts...

Even any "emergency funds" in case of becoming in-between jobs could be a benefit that is provided by the company "even if you are fired" (like matching 401 k funds) but the fine legal print has exceptions such as if you are caught stealing from the company! And most would NEVER do that (think they are going to steal from the company) so such "I was fired because of spilling scolding coffee on the boss but I get some money to tied me over anyway" company programs would be common.

I can see now how even a corpo could ended up poor on the streets once all the company accounts were taken away with malice!

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.

 

[CS554]

Old topic, but as it appears not much is happening in general so posting here.

Yeah, I got super lazy, nope, I didn't forgot. I think I may perhaps have something for Cyberpunk Red players too, in few days.