[scarecrowbob]

Indeed, money was okay and I was remote and fullt time w/ 30-hours and benefits for 7 years of that. I asked for a raise given the economy and was denied, so f- it :D Now that my kids are grown I can afford to be a sound engineer and musician.

If I were introducing young folks into building stuff for the web (and I am considering doing that locally), WP would be my platform of choice for the reasons that you state. It really isn't bad if you are doing mostly what it is designed to do. It's got a lot of horrible parts to the code base, but if you never have to touch them (and there is a lot of equally shitty code written to aid in that effort) then it doesn't really matter.

However, if you're integrating an ERP and a SSO system that has many thousands of users, it gets to be a bit hairy. You're correct that at a certain point a wholly custom solution makes sense. But if the shop where you're working is married to WP because that is where all the success stories they know how to tell live, then WP it will be.