Cisco chief found a 27-year-old ex-founder ‘buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic’—now the Gen Zer is rewriting 98% of its code"
https://fortune.com/2026/10/30/cisco-president-jeetu-patel-gen-z-27-year-old-unlimited-ai-tokens-rewrite-legacy-code-entry-level-jobs/
Anything to report that does not involve IOS?
Yes! Find a kid in kindergarten to explain it to you!
@x1 Anything to report that does not involve IOS?
As you know, Cisco has for decades been acquiring other companies. The products those companies make do not run IOS, correct?
I have been at Cisco for far too long, and I have not seen nor touched a line of IOS. (I was there when Chambers announced some kind of stupid agreement with Apple allowing Apple to use the term "iOS" though.)
Are you an expert on the code base of all the products Cisco has that have nothing to do with IOS? If so, wow. If not, this is the point I am trying to make.
I'm sure the code base you were exposed to was cr-p, but you do know there is more than one product at Cisco right? And therefore more than one code base?
Clearly you don't know. IOS alone used to formally release off many hundreds of branches from one ClearCase repository and most of it's associated hardware each released off multiple branches. At one point IOS had a branch count approaching 200,000. That's why I wrote:
...but there are much larger problems that will remain, and with Cisco's branching strategy I can see whole new levels of problems being introduced.
It should have clear from my post I'm not sure how AI truly transforms one branch not to meet easy to measure metrics but actually make the code clean, understandable and maintainable, and scaling that out on all the branches of just one OS likely becomes a massive set of additional problems.
Yet you speak as if you are an authority on all products and all code at Cisco.
At Cisco I got pulled into endless projects that were collapsing across all of IOS, XE, XR and NX-OS. I know the metrics and where the bodies are buried. I never found a new and clever problem I hadn't seen before and I saw a lot of intentional problems from the trivial to the systemic which permeated every corner of every system that most people with basic skills knew not to make decades before I joined Cisco. These are why I know why the average Cisco software drone underperforms deadwood and why Cisco needs to start experimenting with fundamentally different approaches.
@kw, move on brother. Move on. Might even lower your blood pressure. It's the same stuff from you every time.
I'm sure the code base you were exposed to was cr-p, but you do know there is more than one product at Cisco right? And therefore more than one code base? Yet you speak as if you are an authority on all products and all code at Cisco.
Just let it go, bro.
Who would you bet on being hired for massive projects now?
a 19 yr old vs 58 yr old.
It turns out writing 10 line bug fixes for decades isn't exactly useful experience for completely rebuilding entire systems and by the time people hit Principal Software Engineer at Cisco they can't even do that. Cisco has always had trouble with the basics like structured programming and data structures so I'd generally prefer a 19 year old against a 58 year old Cisco employee.
This is a next level task of what is essentially massive scale janitorial work and the best and the brightest are just not drawn to that. Cisco has always had massive amounts of vestigial code so just removing that can be spun as a major accomplishment even though the remaining code will be just as broken. Cisco also cut and pasted code at absurd levels so consolidating that has some benefit in that you won't have to fix each bug in each cut and pasted copy individually, but there are much larger problems that will remain, and with Cisco's branching strategy I can see whole new levels of problems being introduced.
The alternative is continuing well over four decades of failure with the people who created that failure. Something has to give.
@jq quite the opposite is happening actually
Here goes Cisco stock… G2 already got super rich 🤑
Haha, what Cisco needs most right now is not to use AI to refactor its IOS code... it’s to use AI to refactor its absolutely abysmal leadership team.
@f2 There is a reason why others have not messed too much with it or maybe they gave MR G2 a sane answer or deadline which he did not like. So he thought, use two kids and get this sh-t done quickly. Part of being successful is knowing what all can go wrong. And in this case, we can become global news for all the wrong reasons. I hope they are successful in pulling this blinder. I have my concerns!
@d3 i mean i guess mr G2 knew this kid and his family. No wonder his startup got bought. Can someone look into G2's accounts here and back home to see if there was any kickback? Just curious. You know there are some execs who prefer giving business to ex-Cisco friend's startups even when Cisco has a comparable product.
@bc Props to you sir, had a good laugh at that.
He has been harassing the GMs to refactor for a year; they seem to be laughing it out. So he gave it to the new DJ
More power to him if he can do it. But the kid has no experience in this.
Touching Cisco code is like updating the mainframes. You fu-k up something and it becomes a geopolitical news
But who cares. It’s all about optics and sound bites
The other 2% of the code is where all the nasty bugs rest. Does G2 really believe 2 vibe coders can rewrite literally tens of millions of lines of code? What about maintaining that new code base? Regression testing? New features?
After 27 years in this industry, I’d want my 19-year-old son to know that experience has value, but tenure alone doesn’t justify authority or a 100-person org chart.
A sharp young engineer with a modest budget and the freedom to execute might achieve in weeks what a large organization takes months to approve.
Experience should bring judgment, not bureaucracy. If decades in the industry haven’t taught you how to make others more effective, what exactly have you learned?
Who would you bet on being hired for massive projects now?
a 19 yr old vs 58 yr old.
Fu---d but its true.
No other industry values youth like this other than magazines or tv.
Cisco acquired this 27 year old's start up less than a year ago, what do they mean buried in the org chart? Also the kid interned at Cisco (webex) while in school. They're trying to make it sound like some Good Will Hunting story but what's more likely is the G2 knew this kid and his family for a long time.
How much did the bozo pay fortune to have this garbage published? Weird story.
Paddy, a genZer “buried” in the org chart doing unstratwgic work will refactor 98% of Cisco’s code with another guy in 24months.
You don’t know what to do when you read this, to laugh or to cry? Forbes is kind of a comic book too so not much of a choice then, 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
that 27-year-old ex-founder, should challenge G2 for his position, mostly that 27-year-old would make a better cisco-president..
Pdf use tokens to lure employees
So he thinks that being a corporate bootlicker and overworking yourself is “challenging the status quo”
JFC these execs aren’t the brightest are they
hope they are using "rust" language to rewrite the C code.
Next article: Cisco 27-yr old darling of Jeetu Patel fired for 'accidentally' leaking all Cisco's legacy source code to a fake AI company in India.
Former Cisco 27-yr old darling of Jeetu Patel has founded a new tech company that offers products shockingly similar to Cisco.
Cisco has now acquired the startup founded by the Former Cisco 27-yr old darling that leaked source code
Speaking of this, I have been watching all sort of initiatives, AI based with juniors presenting what they do not fully understand, and a bunch of other id--ts who know even less than the presenter. I joined a few of these meetings because I genuinely thought that someone did it ahead of me. Just to later realize that the ignorance is so rampant that competence can not be recognized because few saw it
Cisco’s president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel isn’t buying it—he’s just handed one of the company’s biggest jobs to a 27-year-old he found hidden in the org chart “five levels” below him.
That sounds like they found each other, equally good.