Flex manufactures everything from hair dryers to the Mac Pro — what’s next?

Great interview with Flex CEO Revathi Advaithi from The Verge.

Revathi and I also talked about the rise of automation and how to think about the future of the manufacturing workforce worldwide. There are going to be fewer people managing more robots as time goes on — and we’ll have to train people differently and think about education and labor policy differently.

In fact, pay attention to how often this conversation comes back to incredibly complex global politics. A lot of times on this show, I talk to people who make software. They write code on their computers, put it on the internet, and they’re off and running. And yes, there are often important policy issues in the mix, but they are nothing compared to the issues of running a global manufacturing company at scale around the world. There’s a reason people say hardware is hard.

Read more.