Kind of unrelated, but I was curious how Cyberpunk 2020 as the pen and paper game was supposed to play to better understand the hacking system in 2077 and maybe the missing/cut content in this game. Originally 2077 had a feature where you had to physically hack into the network by jacking into a person's neck or into the physical system prior to using "quick" hacks, but now we can just use our eyeballs and wifi quick hack anything (this is more in line with 1980s-1990s knowledge of sneaker/hacker infiltration and I like the retro-ness of it....but besides the point).
So as I was reading the player handbook I noticed the class-based system of netrunners, rockerboys, medias, corpos, trauma team...and what have you.
I would consider Jackie to be a street punk and a brawler/tank in some sense. All muscle melee
T-bug is a netrunner which is more akin to a caster/support in a traditional rpg sense, so hacking is like casting spells to nuke people.
Johnny is a rocker boy (not really sure what that was in cyberpunk 2020 as far as a class based system..a bard?)
Trauma team was "tech" based and pretty much a healer/cleric/alchemist so making stimpacks/potions and doing first aid or tech repair to cybernetic implants
That leaves V to be "any role".
In a heist type situation you have a point man, a support/look out, the muscle, get away. You can see that with how the groups are setup with V, T-bug, Jackie and such....which is how it would be configured in pen and paper gaming.
So back to the OPs original idea, starting bonuses based on life paths, should be in line with those roles, but again avoiding heavy handing the players into doing things "the meta" way.
Corpo seems to be about stealth/infiltration/subterfuge/sabotage/deception. That bonus should reflect that idea, so maybe improved exp gain while doing stealth actions, more dialog choices involving trickery, being able to pay off the police if breaking the law, better prices when selling items.
Street Punk is about strength and respect. Improved street cred exp gain, less chance to be attacked by gang members while walking by them, ability to intimidate during dialog choices, discounts at vendors.
Nomads are about survival and ingenuity. Improved chance to find items when looting, faster tech exp, more dialog choices involving alternative solutions (macgyvering things), ability to repair vehicles?
Those are all random, but I found it interesting to try to correlate the pen and paper game to this iteration of cyberpunk. A lot of room to grow and adapt the game still based on that source material.