This is the main criticism of Javascript on the backend. People didn't have choice on the frontend (and largely still don't unless you transpile), and for some reason people thought it was a good idea to bring this "language of necessity" to the backend.

There are plenty of better solutions like PHP, Ruby or Perl.

Up until recently, I'd choose Node over PHP

I think the reason for bringing JS to the backend is that you have to learn it anyway for the front-end, so why not save developers from having to learn two languages. One language = easier learning curve. At least in theory, it sounds reasonable.