The number of them who just blindly put shit into an AI prompt is incredible. I don't know if they were better engineers before LLMs? But I just watch them blindly pass flags that don't exist to CLIs and then throw their hands up. I can't imagine it's faster than a (non-LLM) Google search or using the -h flag, but they just turn their brains off.
An underrated concern (IMO) is the impact of COVID on cognition. I think a lot of people who got sick have gotten more tired and find this kind of work more challenging than they used to. Maybe they have a harder time "getting in the zone".
Personally, I still struggle with Long COVID symptoms. This includes brain fog and difficulty focusing. Before the pandemic I would say I was in the top 10% of engineers for my narrow slice of expertise - always getting exceptional perf reviews, never had trouble moving roles and picking up new technologies. Nowadays I find it much harder to get started in the morning, and I have to take more breaks during the day to reset my focus. At 5PM I'm exhausted and I can't keep pushing solving a problem into the evening.
I can see how the same kind of cognitive fatigue would make LLM "assistance" appealing, even if it's wrong, because it's so much less work.