why is this so surprising? every place i worked at, going back probably 6 jobs, was using an ORM (django, hibernate, or even a self-built one), they went on to get acquired by Twitter, Microsoft, Uber etc, so not completely stupid or obscure. Even if you have a personal dislike of ORMs, if you ever work with/for another team with an exiting codebase and a DB, chances are you will have to work with one.