Have to agree about the regular learning. That's something I look for in candidates - how do they keep current? If someone has little desire to grow in their knowledge, it's a concern to me. You can be good at what you currently do, but with the changes constantly coming in this field, if you're not growing you'll be left behind quickly. As I type this, I'm amazed at how much progress has been made with PowerBI and DAX lately. What was something to play around with a couple of years ago is now getting huge amounts of attention. You mentioned the machine learning and data science aspects and pointed out that they're growing, but not an easy field to break into. That goes back to learning and growing, even if in small ways.
You ask how someone who doesn't strive to remain current, growing their knowledge, in our changing field. I know of one way they can do that. If they work for an organization which puts no emphasis upon remaining current, then those who chose to learn nothing new have found a corporate home.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.