These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

Q: Why do you believe the young workforce is getting a bad rep for being lazy, unmotivated etc., and what is the reasoning behind it?

A: Older people typically say this about younger people entering the workforce. We saw this pattern with Baby Boomers in the late 1960s, and with Gen Xers in the late 1990s, and now we hear the same complaints about Millennials.

Q: In previous years, it was thought to be better to stay at a company longer. Now, it seems that the current workforce is shifting so people typically gain their experience for a year or two and then move on. Is there a benefit to one over the other? What seems to be driving this shift?

A: In the 1950s and 1960s (and maybe the 1970s) it was better to stay at a company longer, but it appears that perception shifted substantially when the implicit work contract changed in the 1980s.  The amount of job hopping also depends on the health of the economy and labor market.  Since the late 1990s it has been pretty common for people to change jobs after a year or two of experience when there isn’t a next step in the organization.  In fact, young people changing jobs was much more common 1996-2006 than it is now.  You can see the analysis fivethirtyeight.com did on this.

Q: Have you seen issues arise when employers attempt to anticipate what Millennials “want,” and get it wrong?

A: Employers who focus on giving Millennials toys like new iPads and don’t provide the basics—good pay and benefits, workplace flexibility, interesting work, the opportunity to grow and develop, the opportunity to be promoted—misunderstand what motivates Millennials.  Sure, they’d like the new iPad, but that isn’t going to impress them as much as providing the basics.