It depends on what you're writing. I've seen enough projects writing raw SQL because of aversion to ORMs being bogged down in reinventing a lot of what ORMs offer. Like with other choices it is too often a premature optimization (for perf or DX) and a sign of prioritizing a sense of craftsmanship at the expense of the deliverables and the sanity of other team members.
Same thing for people claiming they don't need any frameworks.
Forgive my ignorance, but how do ORMs help with adding caching? Or are you implying they obviate or reduce the need for caching?
Why is caching not a feature in DB connection pools? I mean, most databases have it on their side, why not have it as an option for the same query sets prior to hitting the db, with configurable invalidations? Or is it, and I've just never thought to look for it.
Example: if you execute "UPDATE orders SET x = 5 WHERE id = 10", the connection pool has no idea what entries to invalidate. ORM knows that since it tracks all managed entities, understands their structure, identity.