Cisco hands a 27-year-old engineer unlimited AI tokens to rewrite 98% of its legacy code
Cisco gives engineer unlimited AI tokens to rewrite 98% of the company's code
Cisco's president picked a former startup founder, now 27, and told him to "go nuts" — unlimited AI tokens, a 24-month deadline, and a target of rewriting 98% of the company's legacy code. The bet lands as AI eats into entry-level jobs and youth unemployment climbs, making Cisco's wager on Gen Z a test case for how big companies rebuild old software.
Cisco's president is betting on Gen Z to change the company.
- paxy
Having to rewrite decades worth of legacy Cisco code is going to make Claude retire and start a goose farm.
- williadc
There's no goal mentioned in this article as why 98% of the code needs rewriting.
- piker
Is this like a PR piece for the guy? It's odd to see him singled out in a piece that would be normally be about the company, the CEO or the decision itself.
- Refreeze5224
As much as I dislike AI, having worked on Cisco gear for years, I can't imagine AI can put out a worse product. If the re-write is full of bugs and security holes and static SSH keys, then it has not changed at all.
- Taikonerd
There also seems to be some weird hero-worship from the CEO, directed at this 27-YO engineer? Like, "he is the one who can save us."
- balderdash
We have an embedded system in one of product offerings that was largely developed using a bunch of “antiquated” technologies (over the past twenty years) and over the past year the two software devs that maintained it have retired. This normally would have big problem, but the entire codebase was re-written, documented, and modernized in a matter of about 3 months (for about $20k in tokens, and a mid level developer spending 50% of their time on it over that period). So it doesn’t surprise me to think a company like Cisco has piles of situations like this.
- dfedbeef
Literally anyone can do this
- Aperocky
Unless they also have 750K tests like sqlite do, I can't imagine this will go well, even if/especially if the legacy code warrants a refactor.