Thread regarding Cisco Systems Inc. layoffs

It's your choice whether you want to be a job taker or job creator. Latter benefits both you and society and is more effort but far more rewarding.

As a person who was laid off last year, I would say starting a company as early as possible if you can affort the lost in case the business goes bankrupt. If it does fail, that is okay. We start as young, and hopefully we can learn from our mistakes, then start another one to try again.

Starting a company is not a joke, you need to be extremely driven , passionate, hardworking and above all have lots of patience to make the company successful. It takes a totally different mindset of people to do this not everyone can

Never. Unless:

• you have a history of developing innovative products, have IQ > 150
• have extensive domain knowledge and plethora of contacts that matter
• have couple of millions in saving to last, until you have a product developed that others are interested in
• have support of spouse and kids that are well & taken care of. Family matters.
• all ducts are in row, else things fall apart, work go waste, technology world is brutal
• idea that is unique and could be developed in total secrecy, patenting along

For me it would be never. Getting a business off the ground and stabilized requires a massive set of diverse skills as well as connections I don't have. Unique technical skills and wise job jumps made me retirement level money with far less risk.

When is the right time? It's when everything is aligned. There are kids (like under 18) who discovered or created something they could patent giving them market protection and the money and business people come in to take care of the rest. If you're much older there is a decent chance you aren't the creator of the technology or service but have the ability to pull the best in the business into a startup and have relationships with money and customers.

If you've never done a company and you simply don't want to answer to a bad boss you're toast as you're going to be answering to an army of people who can quickly choke your company to death. If what you're developing is made known and a team of ten can do it quicker they'll be in the market before you. Even if what you do is technically interesting the market may be moving in a different direction, such as when Cisco made an expensive consumer telepresence system that also needed a $60/mo additional fee to your ISP to manage QoS when the world was already moving from voice to text messaging.

At least in the US there are organizations for entrepreneurs who hold meetings where you might be able to get some insight and some help. Others will try to exploit you. Since finance, marketing and sales all involve manipulation it can be an interesting training ground if nothing else.

Any time after 35.
Establish family and stablize, get some experience with bth good and bad situations.
If you rush to start too early, you may fail due to immaturity. Don't take failure as a case study. Consider MBA as well, it will give you good knowledge running companies.

you might as well wait for the LR package or RTO mandate at Cisco and just coast until it arrives

use the time to think through your plans and possibly even work on them

I really don't understand why Cisco doesn't float a buyout offer to employees, it would helps folks like you and also help Cisco get their headcount down

And the best place to ask this is on a layoffs site ? You my friend should never think of this again. Troll

80's

I think you need to get some experience and some domain knowledge. You also need to have a strong network and to know how to handle customers and vendors - it takes while 🕰️ to build this - i would say the 20s is probably not the way to go…..

Whatever you do don’t do it when your kids are between zero and 16

Whatever your current age is, that’s the best age

I would vote for the 50s