Yes. LLMs are good at producing plausible statements and responses that radiate awareness, consideration, balance, and at least superficial knowledge of the technology in question. Even if they are non-committal, indecisive, or even inaccurate.
In other words, they are very economical replacements for many non-developers.
It's been my experience that the people running the show at these companies aren't developers themselves, but non-developers. Those people are never going to want to get rid of themselves, no matter how little they bring to the table.
> The result wasn't fewer developers
Makes me wonder if the right thing to do is to get rid of the non-developers instead?