I know that Node.js is the hype but the site was developed by consultants and has plenty of bugs in there that needs solving .. I thought with my JS knowledge that it would be easy to evolve but the reality is different, it is one big mess of dependencies that is difficult to debug if you did not make it yourself ...

You will see that PHP (LAMP)projects are easier to sell than projects in more exotic stacks

I prefer to have all my projects in the same language -> PHP and i all move them to Google APP engine to keep maintenance to the lowest levels

It has nothing to do with performance i prefer to build on technology that I master