Agreed. When we focus on the part of the spectrum of optimizations that do require talent, we're thinking of the exceptional, interesting, makes-a-viral-post-on-HN stuff.

The bulk of the work, in my experience, is simpler than the programming part. It's just a culture/priority thing. Like how most of the industry used to not use source control. Now we do, we didn't need to add "talent" to get that done either.