> If it were me employing say 10 people on identical salary I'd want as diverse a mix of age, gender, race, background and interests as I could manage. Dead on

> If it were me employing say 10 people on identical salary I'd want as diverse a mix of age, gender, race, background and interests as I could manage. Dead on, especially if you are relying on creative solutions to anything at all. > The CEO perhaps prefers young people because they're still wet behind the ears and believe "Just another push this weekend" (the 10th this year) "and we'll see you right come end of year/IPO/share options". Nailed it. Another factor is the behaviour of homogeneous groups, often you want groupthink to occur if you need work pushed along a fairly static assembly line. And homogenous groups get along and cooperate with much less work, it's a quick way to get to a local maxima. The bias against people who are different from you is, unfortunately, present in everyone to some degree. Left unevaluated that means a lot of well meaning people can be very racist/sexist/ageist/etc and feel like all they are doing is building an agreeable, likeable, cooperating team.