First, my two cents on how Street- and Prime-level character gen affects this discussion.
I can't understand how someone could play a street-level game. While the concept is appealing to me, because I like the gang-land, more gritty and less moral style of what a street-level game implies, since the only thing that changes is money, that automatically puts awakened characters at a massive advantage. Even with things like foci and reagents and lodges to spend money on, an awakened character (especially your stereotypical Physical Adept) will always be more comfortable without nuyen than any mundane character who cannot rely on their skills alone.
Similarly, the jump to Prime Runner is the same way. All you're doing it giving everyone more money, so if you designed it to be balanced for Augmented V. Awakened, then Prime Runner would unbalance it. The creators had to know nuyen is a direct factor of a character's abilities, that's why it's a Priority you need to balance against other actual aspects of your character. If it didn't matter, everyone would just start with the same flat amount and be comfortable.
Another issue I personally have with giving the characters more starting wealth would be that, as mundanes and the like
are essentially powered by money and moreso, have a cap (as devices and augmentations only go so high). And it's true that, as with that example with the TM, they'll generally progress quicker compared directly to things they have as reflections (the Samurai and the Physical Adept, the Decker and the TM).
Mainly though, I think it's a bad choice in general to take a character with a different progression and just try to build them the same way. Ideally they should be going for different things. In SR4 Technomancers were specialized and focused, and gained a few completely unique powers through Submersion, while the Hacker had all the programs within reach of him and the ability to contribute much, much more easily to physical combat. In 5th, TMs are sorely lacking in material until
Data Trails is released, so they aren't really good to compare directly to Deckers. Even if you think they're good now, Data Trails will still undoubtedly change what a TM is capable of. Also, they can often use their money to buy things like drones and upgrade the shit out of them, so they still have a place to use money to improve themselves.
I have not played a long-term game. In fact most of the games I play are, sadly, one-offs and don't go anywhere. As such I haven't experienced real character progression. But I felt worried that, whenever I make an Adept (and had players express this as well) that the only thing worth spending Karma on is MAG and Initiation to actually be able to get more abilities, because that is there "main upgrade" like a Street Samurai getting better implants. If the Adept is capable of spending his nuyen on his "secondary upgrades" like how the Samurai spends his Karma on skills and occasionally an Attribute, then it's not so bad. Though aside from buying a bitchin' gun and some armor that makes you look like helghast, it's mostly foci to buy, and they still cost Karma.
That's what my issue is. Do both archetypes have ways to spend
both and also
just one to improve themselves?
So working three years and four months to reach that point is worth it? Meanwhile the tech guy has made 2,587,500 Nuyen?
At this point, the Technomancer hasn't improved any skills, and still has 9 Physical Wound points. I don't think I'd be willing to play that character... sure, you'd be a beast in the Matrix, but outside a troll could sneeze on you and kill you.
There's of course a bit more to it. One thing is that along with the massively increased Resonance the TM also has more Drain Resistance and can use higher-level Complex Forms. In that example the character would have what, 17 dice? That's about six successes on average, which... Hmm, no I still think Complex Forms suck. At least you're rolling 17 dice to hit with a Level 6 Resonance Spike every turn. Nope, that'd still be so much worse than just that same TM using Data Spike...
