I don't think the vast majority of people with IT/ops experience seriously thinks that encryption at rest provides data protection from people getting unauthorized access to the system, in person or remotely...aside from maybe management that ended up in charge of IT and engineering departments without almost any practical-skills background in either.
The author is confusing "it costs us nothing (now that encryption can be done in hardware and is integrated into most desktop operating systems) and protects in some scenarios, so yeah, we just decided to mandate it always be done" with "PEOPLE THINK ENCRYPTION AT REST IS A MAGIC BULLET LOOK AT ME I'M INSIGHTFUL, POST LINKS TO MY BLOG ON LINKEDIN!"
The whole post is insulting to the intelligence of even a fairly junior desktop support technician.