This editorial was originally published on Oct 22, 2010. It is being re-run as Steve is away on vacation.

There was a debate recently about older IT workers and the fact that there is some age discrimination going on in this industry. While that's probably true, it happens in other fields as well. Especially blue collar fields where the amount of work done often relates to some physical activity. Older workers might make less, or be paid less, because they do the job differently.

Without getting into the debate about age discrimination, I wanted to get a feel for how you feel about your career progressing. I'm sure those of you in your 20s can't conceive of being 60 and programming any differently than you do now, but times will change for you.

One of my feelings is that there is a lot of value in experience. The latest .NET changes aren't harder to use or understand than the previous ones, and the changes to T-SQL bring about new things to learn, but they aren't really any more complex than previous features, commands, and constructs. For this Friday, I wanted to ask this:

Are you becoming more efficient as you progress in you career?

Maybe you can answer how you are getting more efficient. Are you developing skills that allow you to produce higher quality code in less time?

I hope that most of you are, and the explosion of blogs, books, and events like SQLSaturday mean that you have more chances than ever to learn how to become more efficient in whatever type of technology you work with in your career.