In this context it means slowly bleed out developers from the teams until all the vital parts have left and you have a husk left.
It's also commonly used when referring to money when an unexpected event has led to losing a lot of money unexpectedly.
When our team first arrived in the office, a colleague walked over to them and said something along the lines of `let's get some sunlight in here' before opening them to reveal the deception.
Boss simply couldn't understand that someone would choose to sit in a quiet, miles away from anyone else on site, air conditioned office even without windows.
Honestly, never bothered me, lots of plants and replacing the strip lights with 5000K bright LED's for the overheads and some LED lamps dotted around it was only the same as working at night at home.
Hands down the best physical work environment I've had outside of work from home.
I joked at the time I'd program in a cave if it had good internet and was quiet.
That it also comes with a substantial pay rise, zero travel and the opportunity to work on stuff I actually find interesting is just a gigantic cherry on the cake.
It was by far the largest factor in getting me to go look elsewhere though not the only one.
I was frank (though polite) with my boss (since I'm a lead and I have zero intention of ever returning) about it - they are going to haemorrhage their senior developers and I know stuff he doesn't yet about others leaving.