You could make a career out of just SQL. I know my company could use a decent SQL programmer. We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of procs written by SQL amateurs
Correct. Tuning SQL queries can deliver performance improvements of several thousand percent, in exchange for just a few hours' work. EXPLAIN is your friend.
That’d be a lot of fun. I find so much joy in that actually. Figuring out what variation of a query satisfies the query planner to create the most performant plans is fun!