Engineer Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, who joined Cisco through the acquisition of his startup EzDubs, has been charged with rewriting 98% of the company's older code within 24 months. Krishnamurthy was granted unlimited artificial intelligence tokens to validate his refactoring proposal during an initial four-week window. Patel intentionally pairs younger hires with experienced staff to foster high-trust debates over engineering processes without causing personal conflict. This reverse-mentoring mindset previously succeeded when a Stanford intern named Baya redesigned a stalled project that experienced workers could not fix.
Key points
Cisco is actively challenging entrenched workplace methods by encouraging early-career em…: Cisco is actively challenging entrenched workplace methods by encouraging early-career employees to question established systems.
High internal trust is considered essential for driving demanding goals and facilitating…: High internal trust is considered essential for driving demanding goals and facilitating friction over ideas rather than personalities.
Leadership is utilizing junior personnel and interns as reverse mentors rather than releg…: Leadership is utilizing junior personnel and interns as reverse mentors rather than relegating them to basic tasks.
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Cisco president Jeetu Patel is backing a 27-year-old engineer. Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy has been tasked with a project to rewrite 98% of the company’s legacy code within 24 months, a Fortune report claims. Patel sees the assignment as an example of why younger employees should have opportunities to challenge established approaches, even when they work alongside colleagues with decades of experience.
“Tension is good,” Patel said.
“I actually try to create tension in the teams because you want to have enough friction on the ideas. You don’t want to have friction with people and personalities.” His approach combines ambitious targets with trust between employees, allowing younger recruits and experienced staff to question how work gets done.
How Krishnamurthy landed the Cisco assignment
Krishnamurthy joined Cisco in 2025 after the company acquired EzDubs, the real-time translation startup he co-founded in 2023. Despite his experience as a founder and CEO, Patel said he was working five organisational levels below him and was “buried away in the organisation doing something unstrategic.”
The two spoke during Patel’s visit to Cisco’s San Francisco office. Krishnamurthy proposed…
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