Knowing the codebase is often the difference between proactive resolution ("This keeps happening when that log message keeps appearing; here is the PR that fixes this bug; here is the runbook on what to do if something like this class of problem appears") and reactive resolution (increasing quota, which costs money and might not always be possible; rolling back, which might introduce security concerns; etc.)
This is probably the biggest reason why SREs at big tech companies are usually also SWEs or SWE-adjacent.
Yes, agents, but given that AI-generated codebases grow and change too quickly for humans to keep up, the issue becomes over-reliance on agents over time, a Russian Roulette style of problem when the cost to access to these models keeps increasing...