Cisco is betting on a young engineer to modernise its codebase. President and chief product officer Jeetu Patel has given Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, 27, a former startup founder, the job of refactoring 98% of the company's legacy code within 24 months, with four weeks as a proof of concept first.
Krishnamurthy joined Cisco through the acquisition of EzDubs, a translation startup he helped build in 2023. According to the report cited by the sources, Patel had found him "buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic", five levels below his previous role. The conversation took place at Cisco's San Francisco office, where Krishnamurthy argued he could rewrite the legacy code with a team of just two people.
The pitch struck Patel partly because, by his account, even the most AI-forward people on his own team had not thought about it that way. Krishnamurthy now has unlimited tokens: "I've given him unlimited tokens because he's going to refactor code", Patel said, telling him he "can go nuts".
AI coding has grown quickly in recent months, but it carries known risks. Autonomous agents can make hard-to-spot mistakes, and the issue matters most for critical systems. Cisco's networking devices help keep parts of the internet running, and its IOS software spans thousands of applications and operating systems to test. Verifying the work and fixing regressions could take well beyond two years, even with unlimited tokens.
Patel wants more young hires like Krishnamurthy, both inside the company and from outside, people who will "challenge the system and the status quo". His argument is that if Cisco stops hiring early-career workers, "where do fresh ideas get injected?" He admits this will create friction between Gen Z staff and long-serving colleagues: "Tension is good", he says, and he tries to create it deliberately in teams, without allowing friction between people.
Patel envisions a combination of three groups: experienced operators at scale, external hires, and founders, CEOs and engineers who are AI-native. "Any of these groups by themselves aren't nearly as potent as when all three work together. That's where the magic comes from."
No comments yet. Be the first!