Cisco’s president and chief product officer, Jeetu Patel, has handed a major code-refactoring project to Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, a 27-year-old ex-founder he discovered buried five levels below him in the org chart. Krishnamurthy, who joined Cisco in 2025 after his startup Ez Dubs was acquired, was initially assigned to “unstrategic” work. After Patel learned Krishnamurthy could rewrite legacy code with just a two-person team, he gave him four weeks to prove the concept and 24 months to refactor 98% of Cisco’s legacy code.
Patel is now hunting for more young hires like Krishnamurthy—those who will “challenge the system and the status quo” and act as “energizer bunnies.” He argues Gen Z should be teaching veterans, not doing data entry, and that friction between generations is essential for innovation. Patel also reverse-mentors interns, including Baya, a Stanford student who redesigned a system and now has an internship. Other tech leaders like OpenAI investor Josh Kushner and Will.i.am are also betting on young talent.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing