Yes that's the whole point - ORM is a crutch developers use to avoid learning how databases work. Yet weirdly they're happy to learn the ORM! Hell in Hibernate you have a query language called HQL, why not just use SQL!
Said developers will never take the next step of swapping out bad ORM-generated SQL for good hand-tuned SQL. The app is therefore doomed.
You seem to have worked with a lot of lazy hack developers, and I can only sympathize. I hope you find a better group of colleagues soon, and maybe you'll find less use for words like 'never' and 'doomed'.
Said developers will never take the next step of swapping out bad ORM-generated SQL for good hand-tuned SQL. The app is therefore doomed.