Cisco gives 27-year-old engineer unlimited AI tokens to rewrite 98% of the company's legacy code in 24 months — president plucks former startup founder, telling him to 'go nuts'
Cisco President Jeetu Patel has handed a 27-year-old ex-startup founder a huge job to rewrite 98% of Cisco's legacy code within 24 months.
In a surprising move to combat youth unemployment and the increasing impact of AI on entry-level jobs, Cisco's president and chief product officer, Jeetu Patel, has appointed a 27-year-old ex-startup founder, Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, to rewrite 98% of the company's legacy code in just 24 months. This decision came to light in a report by Fortune.
Krishnamurthy, who joined Cisco after the acquisition of EzDubs, a translation startup he co-founded in 2023, was initially assigned a role five levels below his actual capabilities. According to Patel, Krishnamurthy was "buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic."
During a conversation in Cisco's San Francisco office, Patel told Krishnamurthy that he was given unlimited AI tokens, effectively giving him the freedom to rewrite Cisco's legacy code. Patel emphasized that he could "go nuts" in this task. The project will have a proof of concept phase within four weeks.
Patel believes that young, innovative hires like Krishnamurthy can inject fresh ideas and challenge the status quo. He is actively seeking more such hires, both internally and externally, to revitalize the corporate structure at Cisco. While acknowledging that this approach may create tension between Gen Z employees and their more experienced counterparts, Patel is confident that a blend of experienced operators, external hires, and AI-native engineers will yield the best results.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
