But the quality of code was already very bad due to market forces. Most code at large companies is notoriously poor despite the talent density, because the incentives are not there to tackle tech debt or improve code quality.

With such a low baseline, there is an optimistic perspective that LLMs could improve the situation. LLMs can produce excellent code when prompted or reviewed well. Unlike human employees, the model does not worry about getting a 'partially meets expectations' rating or avoid the drudgery of cleaning up other people's code.