In software development, we usually don’t really have a firm scope that gets completed in a clean way. So when developers get more efficient (from high level languages, OOP, Agile, Internet, AI, etc.) I think that we normally slide into a bigger scope, rather than finishing sooner or reducing the team size. Everyone usually gets the same boost from a coding productivity innovation at about the same time. So team size for products in competitive markets isn’t affected much by productivity. Improvements received by the customers accelerate, rather than developer job cuts.
This is kind of my take as well, most places I've worked at including the current place I work have more work than the team can get done. Features and fixes get cut or depriorised all the time to try release at a reasonable cadence. If the product you're selling is software then to me it makes sense that you'd not cut anyone from a software engineering team if your margins suddenly get better via LLM productivity gains. Rather you can argue to even increase a team size because increased velocity is a competitive advantage. On the other hand if you work somewhere where software is not the end product but a support function, you might be seen as a cost centre in which LLM productivity gains could be seen as a means of freezing hiring or reducing headcount.
