[devs1010]

Its a well structured, well thought out language that somewhat feels like an extension of a lower level language, like C. Generally, companies working on big projects want developers who are comfortable with a wide variety of programming concepts, including using interfaces, modular code, etc and Java, and its ecosystem, helps to reinforce these types of practices. Static typing is also critical for a larger application, something like PHP is really just a scripting language for front-end display and if thats all you have used you are probably missing out on a lot of larger CS concepts