It's pretty simple actually: We don't have an HTTP server software budget. The expectation is that the tech team will choose the right tools for the job and ask for paid tools when we need them (eg. New Relic). NGINX doesn't differentiate enough from the other HTTP servers out there to justify the cost.
Hi everyone, I certainly didn't expect this strong of a response! I wrote the blog post as more of a slice-of-tech-life brain dump or request for comments/ideas. I certainly won't suggest that everyone should ditch NGINX, but it has possibly run its course for us. As I mentioned, I think that NGINX is an amazing piece of software. It's actually powering the very site where I complained about it. I just can't justify recommending licenses for it at work when we don't do anything with it that Apache httpd couldn't do for free.
You guys are right, The Site is poorly designed and suffers from a lot of architectural flaws. That's why I have a job in the first place! It's been a long journey getting to where we are and there's a lot more to do.