One issue is there were a lot of database enhancements and known side effects introduced at a time where not only was SQL a full time job, it was often paid a lot more and was the most senior engineer on the team.

It has since become a tool of even front end engineers.

Yeah I keep running into situations where everyone else is a backend engineer but only has cursory knowledge of databases. Maybe they think the DB is just some modular add-on you can swap out, or they understand it's the foundation of all their backend code but don't really know how to do it right.