If somebody is older, then you probably DO have to pay them more than if they were younger, because older candidates likely have more experience and have correspondingly higher salary expectations.

So there's that. Now suppose you have an older candidate who is not demanding high seniority pay. In that case they should be on equal footing with the younger candidates, right? Well, no. There's the double standard of "if you're so old, why aren't you above our pay grade? Shouldn't you be a manager or something?" That I don't know how to fix. Then there is the more overtly discriminatory "I'd rather hire the young candidate because old people are slow." Maybe what it really comes down to is "I don't want to work with my dad."

Here are a few forms of "real diversity" I have run into that you will never see initiatives for at big tech, and it would not necessarily be taboo to publicly discriminate against them:

- Number of siblings

- Asian ethnic minorities (Miao, etc)

- Discriminated indian castes

- Parents vs childless

- University degrees

- American 19th century religions (JW, Mormon, 7th day adventists, etc)

- Military experience

- experience in manual labor jobs

- Sunni and Shia Muslims

- Russian ethnic distinctions (russkiye vs rossiyane)

Obviously we can't create programs for every possible form of identity. But you can look at 2 asian men and say there isn't any diversity, when actually their life experiences couldn't be more different.

Similarly, you can have all the skin colors in a room, but if they are all upper middle class, secular humanists, from the same handful of Universities, they aren't bringing new perspectives.