It's worth noting that Drow have, rolled into a single racial feature, "cancel out your racial disadvantage with advantage 1/day at third level, and negate your racial disadvantage whilst also giving you advantage 1/day at fifth level", which is another way of saying, "this debilitating weakness is only meant to be debilitating for the first two levels of the game for a Warlock, and a Warlock only".

Granted, it's still slightly worse than a Tiefling, because of the overlap between faerie fire and darkness later on and the fact that the advantage of deeper darkvision is negated by the necessity of Devil's Sight (which provides the same degree of darkvision regardless of race), but it also provides the most relevant stat bonuses (a 14 in DEX and 15 in CHA gives you two 16s to your often best stats), dancing lights is miles ahead of Thaumaturgy in usefulness (being mobile, mind-controlled lights makes it useful for scouting ahead - essentially, the "cast light on a rock and throw it down the hallway" trick, without the rock), and proficiency in Perception from the base race (which is difficult to come by otherwise, as only the Sailor background gives proficiency in it) - so it's only slightly behind, if you're clever about it.