Are you too old to be an engineer?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has asserted that younger people are just smarter than older ones. We talk to Aviva and other companies about their efforts to challenge ageism. Try to imagine someone working in the tech industry and you’ll visualise a man in his late 20s playing ping-pong and wearing designer jeans and sneakers. You wouldn’t be wrong. The average age of a Google employee is 29. As Facebooks founder Mark Zuckerberg, now the ripe age of 35, famously said: Young people are just smarter. But are they? Although there are no similar statistics available for the UK industry, it’s still clear – age may be the final barrier to be dismantled in the creation of a truly diverse tech workforce. Gareth Jones, an HR and technology consultant and CEO of Headstart, says: The general narrative in the tech industry is age-biased and the focus is on millennials.