Salaries in the Sixth World?

[Madbox]

So, I recently started GMing a Shadowrun 5e game for some friends. It's my first time with the system, and only one player has experience with Shadowrun (but an earlier edition). Most of us have experience with tabletop RPGs, though. Session zero went well, and we just finished with session one a few days ago, with the team starting the legwork for their first mission, an extraction job.

As part of the legwork, two of the party members used fake SINs to get job interviews at a hospital that the target has an appointment at in a few weeks. The team face talked his way into a job as a janitor. The team's mage, who has an MD and a magic license on his fake SIN, passed an interview to get hired as a probationary doctor in the ER. The target's appointment isn't for a week and a half, and they start their jobs next week, so unless the players decide to pitch me a curveball, they're gonna be working a week's worth of shifts. I plan on having them do some composure tests, and some extended tests for first aid and etiquette to see if they can continue to pass themselves off. But if they do well, which I'm expecting based on their builds, then they'll be getting a week's pay each. Which leads to my question....

What do doctors and janitors get paid in the 2070's?

I expect doctors will still make a lot more than janitors, but even then, I could see the janitors and maintenance techs' union at a hospital negotiating some decent pay. What am I looking at for hourly wages for a janitor? What would 1/52th of a rookie doctor's salary be?

I don't think they'll stick around the place after the run, even if they don't get busted, since they both have a 'screw the system' sort of background, but they will probably hang out until then.

[khadgar567]

depends on what writes on their lifestyle. so whats their life styles

[Anonymouswizard]

Oh boy, this is a complex subject, the first question is, where are they working.

I mean, if they're working for a Mega then tough luck negotiating your salary beyond a certain point even with a union, you'll be paid as much as the company is willing to pay you. I remember reading the 5e book and getting the idea that most jobs earn relatively less than they would today.

The quick way to work this out is too look up the wages for a janitor or doctor today. A quick google tell me that Janitors get $10.39 an hour on average and a GP gets $131,851 a year. I shall use these values as my basis.

Now, I'm going to assume this hospital is being run by a smaller corp and not a mega, so I'm not going to slash these figures. To convert them to a week's pay we now need to do calculations.

For the Janitor let's assume he has a 12 hour shift every other day. Probably unrealistic, but it's simple. 12*3.5=42 hours worked a week. $10.39*42=$436.38.

For our doctor I'm going to slash the salary to 90% on the assumption he's not as high as a GP would be, so $118,665.90 a year. Now we can do as you suggested, divide by 52 for 2,282.036... a week. We could also do some jiggery pokery maths stuff and get a more accurate number, but there's no actual need.

To change to nuyen I'd likely multiply by ten, for payments of 4364nuyen and 22820nuyen, but pick the number that feels best for you.

Extra points if you can get the hospital to let them go for one reason or another ('we have just been notified you applied to us with a fake SIN, would you please go with Officer Troll to discuss this at the police station') before their first paycheck

[Madbox]

Khadgar567, they are both medium lifestyle.

Anonymouswizard, that sounds good. The hospital in question is theoretically independent, but has close ties with Renraku Biocomp. They like to hit up the ER for recent amputees to offer them a "good deal" on being the beta testers for new prosthetics. Also, I may have given them an easy out for after the job. During the interview for the doctor, I dropped a few hints that the hospital has trouble holding on to ER personnel and that a lot of people quit due to stress. And nobody is gonna care if the new janitor quits. But I'll definitely keep the background check in mind if they stick around too long. Their fake SINs are only rating 3, so not that good. They just rolled really well when they were tested, and for the doctor there were a few questions about why they couldn't find a copy of his thesis anywhere.

[Anonymouswizard]

Anonymouswizard, that sounds good. The hospital in question is theoretically independent, but has close ties with Renraku Biocomp. They like to hit up the ER for recent amputees to offer them a "good deal" on being the beta testers for new prosthetics. Also, I may have given them an easy out for after the job. During the interview for the doctor, I dropped a few hints that the hospital has trouble holding on to ER personnel and that a lot of people quit due to stress. And nobody is gonna care if the new janitor quits. But I'll definitely keep the background check in mind if they stick around too long. Their fake SINs are only rating 3, so not that good. They just rolled really well when they were tested, and for the doctor there were a few questions about why they couldn't find a copy of his thesis anywhere.

Ah, Rating 3, I'd actually just rule that a good enough to get to doing the job, but they'll be found out if they leave any evidence behind suggesting it's an inside job, and will be discovered relatively quickly anyway (I mean, Rating 3 isn't something to just throw away, but it's not going to do anything long term). The doctor should probably become rumbled first, but with a Rating 3 SIN and some lucky rolls it shouldn't be before the run (after the run is fine).

I mean, I once built a character who exploited the fact that SINner is a negative quality. They were a face who would get a job at the target, uncover information, pass that information along to the rest of the group and leave a door open, and then not actually take part in the run itself. Sure, you get a record if you're ever discovered, but that's why you have a really high rating fake SIN to interact with the rest of the group. Haven't got to play him though, only ever run Shadowrun. But you become a receptionist to earn a bit of cash, do a good job, get the information you need, leave a door open, make sure you're in another part of the building/complex during the run itself if you're working, and then leave a month later with a reference for your next job. Do it right and you never actually have a criminal record.

[DeTess]

If you need a quick reference for this in the future, remember that there is a day Job negative quality in Run Faster that you can use as a base. Very low-skilled jobs would get less (I'd do 1/2 or 3/4 of the listed amount), while high-skilled jobs get more (2-4 times the listed amount).

[Florian]

What do doctors and janitors get paid in the 2070's?

That´s a bit of a wrong question when it comes to SR5.

As you might know, the system uses "Lifestyle" as an abstraction to circumvent having to deal with the details of how the local cost of living and expenditure is.
In addition, a lot of it comes with the "perks" associated for working with one of the Megas, that is also included as part of "Lifestyle".

[Earthwalker]

A doctor should be able to maintain better than high lifestyle and so should be on at least 10,000 a month, the janitor is probably low lifestyle and should be on about 1,000 a month.

Of course add onto that the credits are going to be paid weekly to the bank account linked to the fake ID for the Janitor and Monthly (again to the fake ID) for the doctor.

So do the players want to move the credits out of their fake IDs to uncertified credit ?
This can still be traced ?

It all depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go in your games ?

[khadgar567]

well 500 nuyen for janitor looks good and runner acting as doc will make nice amount of cash even before the job they need to do so considering he is kinda good composure roll 5 or 6 k nuyen per day might be good as he is the only chummer gonna be constantly doing his job with out freaking or mentally breaking he might think about going legit and keep the job.

[LibraryOgre]

I would cop out and do something simple.

Bureau of Labor Statistics has an Occupational Outlook Handbook which will, among other things, give you median pay for things like this.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/

Median pay for a janitor is $24,190 per year.

BLS doesn't have numbers for Emergency Room doctors, but we'll call it General Surgery and stick it at $395,456.

Divide this by 52, and you have their weekly salary. Cut 20% off that and call it their take-home pay.

But he got hired for the Emergency room? How good was his fraggin' fake SIN? Why is he running the shadows if he can do THAT job and afford THAT good of a SIN?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Extra points if you can get the hospital to let them go for one reason or another ('we have just been notified you applied to us with a fake SIN, would you please go with Officer Troll to discuss this at the police station') before their first paycheck

Especially if janitors get payed ones a week but doctors only at the end of the month.

[bulbaquil]

Step 1: Determine which lifestyle a doctor or janitor would likely have in your Sixth World.
Step 2: Their salary is probably going to be somewhere between that, and the threshold for the next step up.

From the descriptions in the Shadowrun 5e book, "lifestyle costs" appear to include groceries + housing and things inside your home such as furniture and appliances + any regular monthly payments such as the electric bill. Basically, if it's not explicitly called out with a cost in the Street Gear section, it's part of lifestyle costs. (So, for instance, vehicles and everyday street clothes are not part of this, since they have explicit costs listed.)

As a general rule of thumb, check the BLS salary for the job in question (as mentioned before) and/or search job boards for openings in that field that list salary information (ideally in the Seattle area). It seems you can convert modern dollar values more or less directly into 2070s nuyen. Those income values are pre-tax, so you will have to reduce those by some amount (either to a national government or to the megacorp in question, depending on who supposedly issued the fake SIN).
- If given as an annual salary divide by 12 for the monthly
- If given as a weekly salary multiply by 4.2 for the monthly (more or less)
- If given as an hourly wage multiply by 170 for the monthly (more or less)

[Madbox]

But he got hired for the Emergency room? How good was his fraggin' fake SIN? Why is he running the shadows if he can do THAT job and afford THAT good of a SIN?

His backstory is that he attended medical school on a fake SIN but got busted last minute, right before graduation, but after paying in a lot of cash. That left him sour on working for the corps, and now works as a street doc who does the occasional run on the side. And the fake SIN he used to get the job wasn't that good, he just got a really lucky roll, and was able to come up with a good bluff when they started asking questions about why they couldn't find any papers this "doctor" had written, and was familiar enough with medical procedure to convince a hospital admin that he knew his stuff. The hospital is sorta desperate for ER staff, so they're letting him start, but will be taking a few weeks to do a more thorough background check in the meantime.

[khadgar567]

His backstory is that he attended medical school on a fake SIN but got busted last minute, right before graduation, but after paying in a lot of cash. That left him sour on working for the corps, and now works as a street doc who does the occasional run on the side. And the fake SIN he used to get the job wasn't that good, he just got a really lucky roll, and was able to come up with a good bluff when they started asking questions about why they couldn't find any papers this "doctor" had written, and was familiar enough with medical procedure to convince a hospital admin that he knew his stuff. The hospital is sorta desperate for ER staff, so they're letting him start, but will be taking a few weeks to do a more thorough background check in the meantime.

few weeks is enough time to settle on job and stay for the long run. He is gonna be helping around 20 to 30 paitents a day with no mental brake so its either keep him around and have some one can do the job or bust him and struggle to keep demend.

[Anonymouswizard]

few weeks is enough time to settle on job and stay for the long run. He is gonna be helping around 20 to 30 paitents a day with no mental brake so its either keep him around and have some one can do the job or bust him and struggle to keep demend.

Of course, with it being a Fake SIN he can always just run away and operate under another one, likely intentionally burning the SIN in the process. A month or three of stressful medical work should give him a decent amount of savings to survive for the next couple of years, and if the hospital really does have ties with Renraku then they might be weary about hiring a potential runner, I'd expect at the very least Renraku gets someone to follow him.

Of course, there are multiple ways this could play out, including the delightful possibility of the SIN being made legitimate to just keep him on. He obviously knows his stuff, it's entirely possible Renraku would sort out finishing med school for him in exchange for an employment contract (get a microscope and read the fine print) if he really is as good at it seems he is. Sudden SINner quality and the possibility he'll be visited by corporate goons trying to make sure nobody else snaps him up would be a surprise.

[LibraryOgre]

His backstory is that he attended medical school on a fake SIN but got busted last minute, right before graduation, but after paying in a lot of cash. That left him sour on working for the corps, and now works as a street doc who does the occasional run on the side. And the fake SIN he used to get the job wasn't that good, he just got a really lucky roll, and was able to come up with a good bluff when they started asking questions about why they couldn't find any papers this "doctor" had written, and was familiar enough with medical procedure to convince a hospital admin that he knew his stuff. The hospital is sorta desperate for ER staff, so they're letting him start, but will be taking a few weeks to do a more thorough background check in the meantime.

Works for me.

But, yeah, I would go with "You make about what a person makes today, but we call it 'nuyen', not 'dollars'." If you want to get fancy, see if you can find the price lists in the various SR sourcebooks and adjust for that... while a low lifestyle might cost 1000 nuyen a month in Seattle, it might be more expensive to maintain in Boston, where the Financial Markets are, or in San Francisco, where the Japanese Military cracks down.

[Xuc Xac]

I don't think they'll stick around the place after the run, even if they don't get busted, since they both have a 'screw the system' sort of background, but they will probably hang out until then.

The janitor is paid by the hour and the doctor is paid by the month. The janitor gets a check every two weeks and the doctor gets one at the end of the month. The doctor's employment contract will have a much larger number written on it than the janitor's, but neither of them will be around to collect their first checks so you don't really need to know what those numbers actually are.

[The Glyphstone]

I seem to remember an Advantage called Day Job in either 4th or 5th edition, though i don't remember which splat had it. You could use that as a peg point to start with.

[Concrete]

Wouldn't their pay also be in corp scrip rather than nuyen?

[khadgar567]

Wouldn't their pay also be in corp scrip rather than nuyen?

depends on if you want to keep the asset or lose it. he is gonna do a good job and giving him corp script will alert him. So no just pay with regular nuyen until he is ready.

[Lord Torath]

I seem to remember an Advantage called Day Job in either 4th or 5th edition, though i don't remember which splat had it. You could use that as a peg point to start with.

In 2E/3E it was a flaw, listed in Shadowrun Companion. Paid 1000/2500/5000 per month, and required 10/20/40 hours put in each week.

I'd go with ER Doctor paying around 1.5 x High lifestyle (15,000 per month), and Janitor paying low lifestyle (1,000 per month). I'd also have both positions paid semi-monthly. But that's just me.