Cisco has handed a massive legacy code refactoring task to Paddy, a 27-year-old AI startup founder, who leads a team of just two people armed with an almost unlimited AI token budget. The goal: rewrite 98% of the company's legacy code within 24 months. The project is still underway. A Cisco executive pushes back against the trend of enterprises using AI to cut back on hiring young employees, arguing that experienced people in mature organizations tend to default to established rules, whereas young people—whose thinking is unconstrained by existing processes—can bring fresh ideas and push the boundaries of what work can be. Cisco is exploring a departure from the traditional junior engineer development path by categorizing talent into three types: senior operations talent well-versed in internal operations, systems-thinking talent with an external perspective, and entrepreneurial talent fluent in AI—fostering collaboration among them to boost technical exploration and delivery efficiency while ensuring stability.