The only thing I agree with here is that it is indeed easy to get started with PHP. It's also easy to get started with BASIC. You should not be using either to write a serious application in 2014.
A strong engineering lead is very important (someone needs to enforce the use of composer, adherence to the appropriate PSR standards, testing, modern mvc/routing etc), but PHP is absolutely capable of producing fast, clean, maintainable software.
Perhaps you've estimated that for a particular project, it might be worthwhile to leverage the talent and effort that's been poured into HHVM.
Perhaps you've had continued success solving a certain type of problem with a particular PHP library or tool.
Perhaps you are constrained by regional availability.
Perhaps you're interested in building a product or tool that you intend for your customers to deploy themselves and you want to provide them with the simplest path to accomplish that goal.
Perhaps you're building a complex SPA or an otherwise JS heavy application that only requires a simple back-end, and you want to focus your big bucks on attracting quality JS engineers while choosing cheaper PHP engineers for the relatively simple CRUD API component.
Why would you choose something kinda grimy when you don't have to?