There are concerns about the next generations of security professionals. The average age of people working in information security is high enough that there is a concern that not enough younger people are entering the profession to meet the demands of the growing security challenges we face.

I wonder if we should we worry about database professionals as well? I have no idea of the average age of data professionals, and I'm not sure we could even get good data. After all, many companies don't hire DBAs, or they have developers working extensively with data in a way that we would think of them as data professionals.

There are always likely to be plenty of people that are willing to develop software and work with data. Even the data science area, where there seem to be few qualified people, is attracting lots of people with a passing interest and a little skill in querying data. However are we getting people that are willing to devote themselves to becoming experts at this craft.

I think that's my concern. It's one I hear Jeff Moden express over and over as well. We find that we have more and more people working in this profession, making their living as a SQL Server focused employee, but they don't have in depth knowledge of SQL Server. I'm not concerned about the guru level understanding of memory clerks, but rather the basic understanding of writing T-SQL, of understanding how and why to use the various types of indexes, of even just being able to get the current date and time.

I know there will always be new people coming to work with SQL Server who will become experts. However I'd hope that we'd have more and more of them percentage-wise, rather than what seems to be fewer and fewer of them.