Maybe in some cases. In my experience maintenance often comes with exploratory work, the kind of where one needs to invest time, not to think about how your own side should work but in dissecting how a dependency or a target platform works in order to identify specific quirks that come and go with the passage of versions. I have seen significant acceleration in these kinds of workloads. This doesn't mean it makes maintenance free like some claim. It just makes it about 70% less of a burden

How is this an illusion? Thousands of people work on React, Svelte, Vue, Chrome, Linux, etc. Most aren't paid