[moriarty-s3a]

It's a tradeoff, though. For 99% of LOB applications the odd details of specific database implementations are irrelevant and can be ignored by even a team of mediocre developers. Most businesses are mostly interested in selling 5-10x the number of licenses for 1.1x the cost. (Or, like the sibling comment pointed out for 0.9x the cost because you can usually ignore much of the annoying boilerplate) Performance frequently is more than "good enough" and in the 1% case where it isn't, most ORMs will let you write custom SQL (or, you can always write it outside the ORM). Sometimes the best and cheapest solution to performance problems is to simply throw more hardware at it. IME, most developers are terrible at writing queries with or without an ORM.

There are certainly use cases where ORMs are not appropriate at all but the ability to evaluate your situation and recognize the tools that are appropriate and those that are not is an important skill in the software industry in general and is not limited to ORMs.