GoKawiil
Tech News
Cisco is allowing engineers unrestricted access to AI tools to rewrite and modernize older codebases, according to a Fortune report. Executive Jeetu Patel described structuring his team into three groups: experienced Cisco operators, outside systems thinkers, and AI-native entrepreneurial engineers, saying their combination drives innovation.
Cisco president Jeetu Patel has assigned Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, a 27-year-old engineer who joined via the EzDubs acquisition, to lead a two-person effort to refactor the company's legacy codebase using AI tools, with unrestricted token access. Patel has set a four-week trial period, aiming eventually to rewrite 98% of Cisco's legacy code within 24 months. Patel says he found Krishnamurthy buried several levels down the org chart doing work he considered unstrategic before elevating him.
Meta reportedly built an internal leaderboard called Claudeonomics that ranked employees by AI token consumption, awarding titles like 'Token Legend' to top users who burned through over 60 trillion tokens in a month. Similar tracking has surfaced at Disney, JPMorgan, KPMG, Amazon, and Accenture, with some firms incorporating AI usage into performance reviews.