This was really sort of spread around the org. The PM in charge could have clarified up front "average workload is 30k records, and expected turnaround time is 4hr". The dev(s) involved could have recognized there was missing clarity, and asked. This is less about "you have to go learn SQL" specifically, and more just recognizing communication gaps in general, and working to address.
My colleague who implemented the "faster ingest" process was viewed by PM and others as interfering and threatening to others. He'd only been there 18 months, how could he possibly know better than DevX, who's been with the company 5 years, and knows the problem space so well??
With respect to the 'rare' part, it feels relatively natural to me, and to some others I know. It's at least partially the nature of doing 'problem solving' across multiple disciplines for decades. Having the political ability to get those 'long range' fixes/changes past the vetting of others, who will end up having some of their plans challenged, is the much harder part. But... I've not had a good fit in traditional/normal corporate orgs for many years either.
Profit sharing won't achieve anything if you are bad at filtering bad hires.
The point of profit sharing/stock comp is to get a better pipeline of applicants. It's them up to the company to filter adequately (remember: everyone whose mother told them they were "good at computers" because they play videogames all day applied at Google). A company that doesn't do stock comp is not serious in my book.
"A players hire A players, B players hire C players. Do you get it?" [0]
[0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=How_to_Hire_Insa...
In my experience, initiative in even its most short-sighted forms (such as 'encounter problem, see straightforward way to prevent problem from recurring, take action to implement this solution') is quite unusual. True 'long range' initiative, where someone spontaneously identifies desirable but as-yet unreached goals and invents and implements non-obvious plans to attain them, is incredibly rare. No matter how you try to incentivize it most people just don't work like that.
What companies need to do (IMHO) is to recognize this aptitude when it does show up, and give these individuals the freedom to implement their improvements. This will matter more to them than any normal amount of money.