Do you think the Exec role is kind of at odds with itself and has underwhelming mechanics?
I multiclassed my character into Exec and it's caused me to have a long think about the role.
To get it out of the way, Teamwork is a powerful ability, and very useful, so I don't think the role is useless exactly. However, Teamwork seems to really be the only draw of the class + saving some eddies.
When you first start, these eddies are a big deal, but once you get established, the free housing isn't that important, and the other money saving benefits are just not that useful. If you want free money, the Fixer is doing a much much better job at that. It's fairly minor.
Teamwork is good, but has some annoying aspects to it. For one, needing to roll for your teammate's stats just sucks. If I pick a Covert Operative and want them to be good at the Business skill (one of their +4 skills), two of the results have 3 int, and one has 4. So half of the time, these skills being at +4 wont matter because my int is just too low. I just don't understand what the point of the randomness is, it makes getting a new Teammate something unreliable.
Loyalty is gamey and clunky. It feels like a dating sim where you're playing a game to keep the happiness or relationship number up through arbitrary things. My GM just doesn't track it because it honestly doesn't make much sense and is just annoying to track.
Then there's the whole thing where the flavour of the class is kind of just at odds with the mechanics of the class. The features you get just aren't very good for representing what an Exec is, Fixer does this 100x better. The only real mechanic of the class is Teamwork, which ends up being better as a combat feature than anything.
Your Team Members just aren't good at doing anything outside of combat, their stats are too low and skills are too low. There is almost always going to be a party member who can just do their out of combat stuff better than them. It's not terrible exactly, as having another body who can do things simultaneously can be very useful. However, redundancy out of combat tends to be not really that useful, whereas another body in combat is always useful. Literally the only option that actually does it's thing well is Driver, and they also have better stats. Technician maybe too, but it really depends on how much you need one.
If you pick the class for teamwork, then the flavour of the class doesn't really work well for you, and even the mechanics. Loyalty gets in the way of things, and the vague idea that you work for a corporation and need to do their bidding gets in the way of you. Keep in mind this is barely even touched on in the class mechanics. The rest of the features are just not that useful either.
This is also I think the only class that just has a dead level where you don't gain anything. At Rank 4 you literally just don't gain anything. Not much to say there. Rank 1 is basically a dead level outside of character creation. Not to mention how bad multiclassing into Exec is until rank 3.
Your higher ranks outside of 5 and 9 just aren't good. Trauma Team membership at Rank 6 and 8 is pretty bad, getting an upgrade to your housing is questionably useful (which you get twice).
Overall, the role just seems to work in strange ways that doesn't really fit the flavour, and is honestly underwhelming to play. It's funny because the class isn't exactly weak, but only if your GM is leaning hard into the social advantages of being an Exec (which has absolutely zero grounding in the class mechanics or rules. I really wish the game expanded on the roles and their places in the world.), or you just run it as a combat class.
Am I the only person who thinks this way about the role? I can't tell if I'm missing something.