Comment by twodave

I work on optimization a large fraction of my time. It is not something learned in a week, month or even a year.

At least in B2B applications that rely heavily on relational data, the best developers are the ones who can optimize at the database level. Algorithmic complexity pretty much screams at me these days and is quickly addressed, but getting the damned query plan into the correct shape for a variety of queries remains a challenge.

Of course, knowing the correct storage medium to use in this space is just as important as writing good queries.