Ex-Big Tech Employee Burned Out, Quit Corporate to Be Entrepreneur

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jessica Yen, a 33-year-old entrepreneur in Los Angeles who is the founder of Daily Work Journal and Surfers Jewelry. Business Insider has verified Yen’s employment history with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

It’s the classic story: You quit a 9-to-5 to become an entrepreneur and end up working 24/7.

I worked long hours in data analytics, but the difference now is that I’m willing to put in far more hours because it’s my own company; it’s part of my identity.

Now, my work includes things I love: talking to surfers, dreaming up brand trips — experiences I could never have had as a corporate analyst. It’s high risk, high reward, but the flexibility and creative freedom make it worth it.

I thought consulting life would be glamorous

I started my career as a business technology analyst at Deloitte right out of UCLA in 2014. I chose Deloitte’s San Francisco office for a change of pace from Los Angeles.

I had imagined a glamorous consulting life filled with travel, but my last project before quitting Deloitte involved commuting from San Francisco to Walnut Creek every day. It took two hours, round-trip, in traffic, and it drained me more than the job itself.

In consulting, you don’t have much control over what projects you work on, and I realized I wanted more say in my career.

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Being in San Francisco, tech was all around me, so I started interviewing for tech roles while still at Deloitte. I landed my first data role as a marketing analyst at Salesforce in January 2016. In interviews, I largely leaned on the Excel skills I built at Deloitte, and since it was also a core skill the team sought, it helped me transition seamlessly into my first tech role.

Data analytics was a high-stress environment

Salesforce was my introduction to data analytics, but I quickly realized marketing wasn’t my long-term focus. I wanted to keep working with data while expanding into a broader scope, so I moved into business operations, which allowed me to touch strategy, business development analytics, sales analytics, and marketing analytics.

From there, I joined Yelp in a business operations and strategy analytics role, working across multiple functions. People analytics became the final area I wanted to explore.

The opportunity to round out my skills with people analytics came at Cruise, the self-driving car startup, which I joined in June 2019. At Cruise, my role aligned more closely with my interest in people and decision-making.

But after several years in the high-stress field of data analytics, I was exhausted. Everyone wants your time and expects you to build dashboards, often with quick turnarounds. You’re responsible not only for the work but also for its absolute accuracy. I’d stay late testing dashboards and show up early to present results to executives, walking them through what the data meant and how to act on it. The stakes felt high.

At my peak stress, I had dreams about redoing Excel formulas, obsessing over whether I’d divided something twice or misplaced a decimal. It got to the point where I was constantly ruminating about tiny details that could throw off entire reports by orders of magnitude. That level of pressure wasn’t sustainable for me.

My shift into entrepreneurship happened in stages

While still at Cruise, I enrolled in a coaching program, the Coactive Training Institute in the Bay Area, got certified, and began taking on clients on the side.

In August 2020, during the pandemic, I decided to leave Cruise. I was burned out, single, living alone, and feeling the isolation of COVID-19. I wanted a break from corporate life and leaned into coaching full time.

At the same time, I launched my first product business in December 2020 — Daily Work Journal, a notebook brand. It was my first foray into e-commerce. I ran that company until I sold it in January 2024.

After selling Daily Work Journal, I took some time off and started surfing, purely for fun. I never planned on building a business around it, but it became the perfect synergy; that’s how Surfers Jewelry began. I had confidence in my ability to run it because it’s e-commerce-based, like my journal brand.

Now, my focus is entirely on my jewelry business: creating, marketing, and connecting with the surfing community. I only coach occasionally, when past clients reach out.

My advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

I always advise aspiring entrepreneurs to have a corporate career before striking out on their own. Whatever you specialize in becomes your edge as an entrepreneur.

My experience in data analytics gave me skills I now use every day and confidence in the financial side of my business. I understand the big picture, I can hold my own in negotiations, and I don’t need to hire for that part of my company.

When I was younger, I never imagined this career path. Most of my peers stayed in corporate roles, and I didn’t become an entrepreneur until my late 20s. But now, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Do you have a story to share about leaving the Big Four or Big Tech? Contact this editor, Jane Zhang, at janezhang@businessinsider.com.