I think the simple problem with PHP is that its dated. Regardless of whether the language has serious flaws or not, the fact is that it takes a lot more effort and code to do the same things that new web frameworks let you do with a few lines of code. PHP is a great way to learn the basics because it doesn't have quite as many abstractions but that leads to slower development times, and plain bad code (insecure) if the dev doesn't know what hes doing. By the way, I'm referring to slower development times for decent size projects, not quite "hello world" (Honestly, even "hello world" would just be an HTML page and a route in django or RoR - 2 lines vs 1).
So if I was operating in the capacity of a recruiter for a project/company/startup, I'd definitely pick a skilled RoR dev over a skilled PHP dev, because the frameworks and the language themselves are handicaps for the PHP dev. Even if PHP is faster for a very small project, as soon as you move into a decent sized project, the frameworks start paying handsome returns for using them.
Note: I don't particularly love RoR/Django. Substitute with your favorite framework. It's just to illustrate a point.