php is my language of choice, I love modern php, but I struggle with the same question. As a language, I think php is great, and for a solo project it is an obvious choice for me because of my proficiency and the quality of the language... but would I start a greenfield project with php? No.

I've worked across a variety of different companies and a consistent theme is the existence of "php developers" in these companies, and the bad quality software they produce. I'm currently working at a company (founded within the last 5 years) and their php codebase is AWFUL (no structure, 1k+ LOC methods, no tests, no ci, no documentation etc.)[1].

The problem is not php, it's that a lot of PHP developers are doing the same thing they did 10 years ago, despite the industry having moved on. As a Software Engineer, I think there's a very valid case for php over Ruby or Python or Node, however as a CTO or a team lead, I'd really, really struggle to justify it, which pains me to say. If you're trying to hire php developers, you'll be hiring a lot of people who haven't changed how they work since the late 2000s. I'd rather hire code school graduates to write Ruby than a php developer with a decade of experience.

[1] People can write bad code anywhere, but pre-historic php is especially terrible. A company with bad golang is an order of magnitude more penetrable than a company with bad php.