I had never much thought about the concept of discriminating someone based on their age until several weeks ago. What got me thinking about it is an older gentlemen (mid-50s) in our phone tech support department who is trying to get promoted into our desktop team. When I heard about this the first thing that came to mind was "Him? He's over the hill, he's not going to add much to the team". I thought this not only because he was older, but also because he hadn't really accomplished much with his life so far. If he's in his 50s and just barely breaching desktop why would there be any reason to believe he's going to excel at doing that?