In 2011, President Obama made a pilgrimage to Silicon Valley and asked tech titans what it would be required to reshore factories making iPhones and such. The NYT recalled a conversation between Obama and Steve Jobs:

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.•

Jobs may have been correct, if for the wrong reasons. The plants actually are moving back to the U.S. in increasing numbers, though there’s a question as to how many jobs will be returning with them and how many will be swallowed up by automation, which has lowered costs enough so that those plants can come home at all. The further question is how many of the positions that escape the rise of the machines will be prone to further automation.

In a Techcrunch article, Jim Rock reports there’s reason for hope, at least in the immediate future, as near-term robots won’t likely have the flexibility human workers possess. An excerpt:  

Although the experts cannot agree on exactly how many robots will enter the economy, it’s safe to say that America’s workforce — from the manufacturer’s factory floor to the open office of a law firm — will look very different once the technology is fully integrated. You must do two things to be a truly valuable worker in this environment: embrace technology and be adaptable.

As millennials age into the workplace, the idea of embracing technology is starting to seem a little more passé. Most office workers know how to use email, run a word processor and maybe even set up a three-way call on their Polycom. As robots enter the workplace, though, knowing the intricacies behind the technology that runs them will become an increasingly coveted skill set.

This is not to say that all white-collar workers should enroll in engineering night classes, but knowing how technology works at a base level will make you better at your job — a job that will more and more likely rely on interacting with robots. Employers need to actively promote training programs that empower employees to work more effectively with new tech.

The second trait that future professionals should focus on is adaptability. Reid Hoffman, co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, shares a story about his visit to the Huawei plant in Shenzhen, China:

I was expecting, as a Silicon Valley technologist, that it would be a complete line of robots…Roughly 60 percent of it was automated and 40 percent of it was still people. You say, ‘Is that just because of low cost?’ No. These are actually high-pay, high-skill jobs. The answer is actually that, in the future, adaptability is key, and people are more adaptable. So when they set up the machine line and it’s all machines, there is a huge amount of retooling to shift from line one to line two, whereas the people are much more easy to shift.”

As robots enter the workforce, most will be extremely proficient at one or two specific tasks. Humans, on the other hand, can be immensely flexible when it comes to how we work.•