In Reed's route, we find out that Myers sent Reed to recruit So-Mi after they traced her during her botched Militech hack. He managed to "convince" (more like blackmail) her into joining by saying Netwatch will kill her and everyone she cares about unless she agrees to go.
Given So-Mi was only 19 and probably rattled af after the failed hack, she bought into it.
But to me, there is no freaking way Netwatch would flatline a talented and prodigy level netrunner like So-Mi over recruiting her. Having this thought, Reed's whole "I'm offering you this as a favor to you" recruitment tactic becomes more and more manipulative.
Songbird's entire life trajectory would've been different if Netwatch had beaten NUSA to the punch and recruited her. Although ideally for her, ghosting and not falling into the hands of any corp is best.
What do you all think would happen if So-Mi joined Netwatch instead? Would her life be better cuz she would have avoided the whole blackwall fiasco? But she could also end up wasting her talent doing a corpo desk job / chasing after VDBs all day.