Theoretically, your employer is paying Databricks, because they'd rather pay them than have a harder time finding employees with actual skills (and paying them accordingly).
Additionally, it's somewhat of a standard now - so it's easy to hire other people in the org with skills using it.
But isn’t that something they would need to do anyway - find employees with actual skills?
I mean sure, it’s how the snake oil is sold - “buy so and so saas product and you wouldn’t need to hire and can reduce cost”. I’m surprised that line can still sell today because in software it’s rarely true unless you can merge excellent talent with said product.
If you work at a small startup - they are mostly parroting what large and mid-size companies are doing - regardless of the fact that they're likely to fail before they get to that size, and doing said thing might make their chances of failure higher.
If you work at a large company - having a larger pool of candidates to hire from is definitely worthwhile.
And, it is much easier to have a poor understanding of Databricks than a very good understanding of data engineering in general.
Someone with a poor understanding of Databricks might be able to do 80% of what you can do with a great understanding of data engineering in general.
We outsource janitors, lunches, and other aspects of the business. Some things are not your core competency where having additional people investment detracts from your core mission.
That and do you really think 99% of companies are able to build something better or cheaper than databricks. Likely not
Additionally, it's somewhat of a standard now - so it's easy to hire other people in the org with skills using it.