I've observed that veterans in tool A frequently have huge problems when they try to get around the very different tool B. This, and not Rails, could be the cause of the problems you are experiencing. Every time I have to maintain a Java web app, for instance, I suffer.
My experience with Django and Plone, more often than not, makes everything much more painful than it would be were I more comfortable with, say, ASP.NET.
I think the biggest thing is if that learning a complex framework is hard enough, but people often just assume that their expertise in a c-like static language is immediately transferable to anything else. If you have no experience in a dynamic or functional language and want to pick something up in that area, the first thing you have to learn is how people approach problems in that different paradigm, followed by gaining a level of competence with the syntax/libraries before they can even start learning the framework.
I think it's actually worse than that - there's a lot to unlearn in order to be effective with tools like Rails. It's like approaching Smalltalk and asking where's the source code.
My experience with Django and Plone, more often than not, makes everything much more painful than it would be were I more comfortable with, say, ASP.NET.