I don't know why you need one at all, if the time control is say 10 minutes you have 10 minutes to play your moves. Why would your first move be any different?
If the game is chess960, you need a lot longer to prepare your moves, especially the first one.
In any case, it sometimes can take a while to notice you have been paired, especially if it was taking a long time.
I would like to clarify that the games are unranked if the opponent does not make his first move. So, the first move is different to the other moves, since it determines if the game is going to be ranked or that matter even played (outside of tournaments and arenas). The auto abort timer exists to prevent malicious intent of players intentionally wasting other players time by starting a game and not making their first move. Eventually they would forfeit on time, but since the games are not ranked unless both players have made their first moves, there would be no consequences of this kind of behaviour.
I am more tolerant for some waiting in longer time formats since it takes ages to even find an opponent and since you are investing more time to your upcomming game, you may want to think about your openings. However, with short time control, for instance bullet, I am sick of waiting 30 seconds and then the game just gets aborted, if I could have just aborted the game myself after 10 seconds.
I feel like there are currently major flaws in the game abort system. I have noticed that some players for some reason have really long auto abort times while other players don't. I don't understand why this is the case, and I have even less understanding why some players have 1 minute abort timer for 1 minute bullet games. That is insane! Nobody in their right mind will wait 1 minute for the opponent to decide if he wants to play the game or not. Especially, if the opponent has spent, say 20 seconds, to connect to the game, why on earth would they choose to play with 20 seconds handicap anymore?
To make matters even more ridiculous, whenever the opponent takes prolonged time period to connect to the game and I would like to abort the game to get a game faster, the site mocks me that I am aborting too many games. Seriously, that is absolutely obnoxius output that the site is sending me.
I suggest that the auto abort system in bullet games (and why not in blitz games) is max 15 seconds or otherwise player should be granted purity to abort as many games as they please, given that the opponent has yet to connected to the game (of course excluding tournaments, arena games or etc.)