Padmanabhan Krishnamurthy, 27 years old, was entrusted with an important task by Cisco Chairman, contrary to many businesses that prioritize experienced personnel in the AI ​​era.

Krishnamurthy joined Cisco last year, after the US tech giant acquired the translation startup EzDubs that he co-founded in 2023.

Jeetu Patel, Cisco President and Chief Product Officer, spoke with him during a visit to the company's San Francisco offices. The young founder with CEO experience thought he could rewrite Cisco's old source code with just a team of two people.

Patel said that even the most AI-savvy person on his team had never thought of this option. So he gave Krishnamurthy four weeks to demonstrate, with the goal of refactoring 98% of the old code within 24 months.

"I gave Krishnamurthy unlimited tokens because he was going to refactor the code. I told him to relax and do his best," Patel told Fortune.

In many companies, only people with decades of experience are trusted with such large projects. However, Patel says that's the problem. "If you don't recruit new people into the profession and just let your staff operate as before, where will new ideas come from? How to challenge the status quo?", he asked.

According to him, experienced employees can still come up with new ideas, but cannot ask questions that only inexperienced people would think of. He is looking for more people like Krishnamurthy, young employees who are willing to "challenge the system and the status quo, are always full of energy, help motivate and encourage people."

Admitting that putting Gen Z employees in the same room as people who have worked at Cisco for a long time can create conflict, Patel says this is a good thing. "I try to create tension in the groups because I want there to be enough conflict between ideas," he explains, encouraging senior staff to learn from young people.

Patel is not the only business leader betting on young people. Josh Kushner, founder of investment fund Thrive Capital, shared that he likes to hire people with less than four years of experience in the industry.

Alon Chen, founder and CEO of generative AI platform Tastewise, is also actively looking for inexperienced Gen Z employees. "I hire new people because they don't have any boundaries or limitations in the way they see the world. They are almost 'AI natives', born and raised in this new world of opportunities. I find some of the best ideas come from the younger generation who have never entered the labor market," Chen explained to Fortune.

Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services, rates young entry-level workers as one of the best employee groups due to low recruitment costs, ease of training on company culture, and often eagerness to learn new tools. This is part of the reason Amazon is hiring more than 11,000 interns and entry-level software development engineers globally this year. "Young employees bring energy, excitement and new perspectives," Garman told Business Insider.

However, as simple, repetitive tasks are increasingly turned over to AI, businesses generally tend to favor experienced people over rookies. In a study published in June by the AI ​​Enterprise Institute (AIDE), the authors screened more than 161,000 job postings of S&P 500 companies (the 500 largest public companies in the US) posted on LinkedIn in January. As a result, they found 8,140 job postings related to AI, but 71% were for senior positions, 16% were for mid-level positions, and only 13% were for low-level positions.

Research from Stanford University shows that recruitment of young people has stagnated since the end of 2022, around the same time OpenAI released ChatGPT, opening up a wave of generative AI. In the period from the end of 2022 to September 2025, in the occupations most affected by AI, the number of young workers with jobs decreased by 6% while older workers increased by 6-9%.

Thu Thao summary