SAN FRANCISCO — On a typical workday, Haomeo Huang spends most of his time on Zoom calls, poring over spreadsheets and presentations and trying to make smart decisions about funding emerging robots and devices and which ones to skip.
He also spent months practicing an ancient carpentry technique with his wife to fit two pieces of wood perfectly together. After each failed attempt, the hobby woodworker tosses another expensive white oak tree into the trash.
"We're patient," Lydia said, after carefully running the piece of wood through the table. "We've built a dining room where we're going to die."
Huang, 40, and The, 37, who work in the pharmaceutical industry, can easily walk to the upscale furniture store near the woodshop where they work on Saturdays and spend $4,000 on a finished table. But like many modern workers connected to digital devices all day, Huang and The Deal stress relief and the sense of connection and accomplishment that comes from working with their hands. "It's very humbling and inspiring," Huang says of his time in the carpentry shop. By day, Huang is a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins, a Silicon Valley powerhouse that has made early investments in tech giants like Amazon, Google, Twitter and Uber. "When you have a chainsaw... you can't think of a financing that doesn't add up... If I don't hold it a certain way, I'll lose my hand."
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During the rise of technology, many wanted to "move fast and break things," a slogan promoted by Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook that became an all-consuming ethos that spread across Silicon Valley. Now, in an era of layoffs and cost cutting, employees feel the need to slow down and get things done.
In recent years, a carpentry shop has been set up in the city aimed at those who like to work with their hands. The startup holds group classes, and employees at both tech giants say there are woodworking spaces on campus (the companies neither confirm nor deny).
"Techs never believe me when I tell them to slow down. They go fast and screw it up," says Jake Klingensmith, a 31-year-old independent software engineer who runs a woodworking shop. Mud House, a large space in the Soma neighborhood, with a pottery studio at the front.
Interest in developing craft skills extends beyond carpentry. The maker movement, where people use do-it-yourself techniques to make things, has been going on in the Bay Area for about a decade. During the pandemic, some techies have rekindled their obsession with Legos. Glass blowing, welding, ceramics and other industries are also gaining momentum.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook how he learned to sew while helping his daughter 3D print clothing.
Venture capitalist Ariel Zuckerberg, one of Mark's younger sisters, and several others recently gathered 40 people at their Lake Tahoe compound for Learning Man. Over the weekend, complete with special swag, bookworms take place at Burning Man; Contestants teach each other how to sew, DJ, cook the perfect French omelet and more.
"It's not just tech people who love tech," said Zuckerberg, who shared his DJ skills with the crowd. When Zuckerberg learned to sew learning patches on a Patagonia jacket, he had "a deep sense of accomplishment, and it was very satisfying." She enjoyed it so much, she bought a sewing machine.
That's a big part of woodworking's appeal, says Clayroom owner Neil Gershgorn, 37. For example, a software engineer can debug the code as needed after deployment. Gershorn, on the other hand, "if you miss a chisel... it's all over."
But the hobby isn't cheap: Woodworking classes cost a few hundred dollars, and studio memberships and materials quickly swell into the thousands, befitting the elitist nature of the tech world, where engineers earn salaries in the tens of thousands. Other niche hobbies, like baking and racquetball, "woodworking has a slightly higher entry barrier in terms of equipment and access," says Klingensmith. Huang and Estimates spent about $10,000 on carpentry lessons, studio memberships and materials.
It can be difficult for someone trained to focus on speed and efficiency to work slowly and deliberately.
Sharmila Lassen, a 60-year-old retired software engineer, told a clarum class recently that the experience was as much a lesson in patience as woodworking. When he tried to "improve" - the technical term for making the process as efficient as possible - by stacking two pieces of wood on top of each other, he had to flatten the pieces that didn't fit perfectly. In all, he would spend $300 and 12 hours to make a small tray.
Lassen's friend Alison Jones, senior vice president of an architecture and engineering firm, joined the dish-serving class.
"I came in with a headache," Jones says, but working in a wood shop calmed him down.
"I want to learn to be good at something," he added. Grabbing the tray, he said, "Finally, I've got this thing, and it's not a spreadsheet."
"When you work with wood, you benefit from a history of human craftsmanship that has been around since our species existed," says Klingensmith.
Fans believe the hobby is perfect for the recession, when many people lose their jobs or take vacations. John Szot, 30, who recently moved to the Bay Area from Manhattan, found woodworking a "nice change of pace" when he took a break from finance. He found that he had "less and less" opportunities to work on his hands.
Sajot also came to the woodshop partly to meet people, as he was new to the area.
Although about half the country's blue-collar workers have returned to the office, tech giants are among the few remaining, and office space in downtown San Francisco is at an all-time high — so much so that many offices are being converted to apartments.
Because people spend less time traveling, they have more time for hobbies and need more connections, Gershorn said. There's a "kinetic energy that happens when you walk into the studio after five o'clock," adds Gershorn, watching the metric whizzing and lathe turning, people working side by side on different projects.
Chris Steinrock, the 38-year-old owner of Wood Thumb, another neighborhood woodworking shop, has seen a renewed vigor in the hobby for office workers who spend most of their day looking at electronics.
Wood Thumb often brings in teams from nearby tech companies to serve as a team building exercise. When people come to class, "you can tell they're drunk," Steinrock says, comparing their behavior to that of "zombie robots." At the end of a class where participants made small cutting boards or shelves, "everyone was excited and excited, and there was life in the room."
Huang and Di joined the woodworking shop because they were looking for new ways to communicate with each other. Huang said the hobby is "a great bonding experience for us."
The couple has a rule where when one runs out of something at the end, the other takes the project to the finish line. When a newly bent piece of wood was needed to secure the table to the wall, Huang stepped in to make it. And just as Huang lost trying to master the intricate corners of the tail joint in the dining room they had built, he pounced on them.
Last Saturday, instead of cutting pieces of wood that could become table legs, they went back to basics and built a prototype. Making models from scrap wood is one piece of advice Klingensmith offers for those taking the plunge.
"I'm so close," he told Huang proudly, and held up the pit and tongue after cutting the wood with a table saw.
Huang recommends using a power sander to finish the edges so they match.
"Then I'll be leaving very soon," he said. "So close. Be a little more patient."
Get out a chisel, then sandpaper. After about 30 minutes, the two pieces of wood were joined together. It's not perfect - there is a small gap between the two pieces - but nothing that can't be fixed with a little glue.
