‘Stress wasn’t sustainable’: 33 year old ex-Deloitte consultant explains why she left tech job for jewellery business

33-year-old Jessica Yen was once a consultant at Delloite and also served in many other similar roles but has now transtioned to enterpreneurship and now runs Surfers Jewelry, an e-commerce platform built for surfers.

Yen detailed her transition from her corporate job into enterpreneurship in an essay for Business Insider.

Straight out of UCLA in 2014, Jessica began her career as a technology analyt at Deloitte. However, the work at Deloitte wasn’t as glamorous as she had hoped and it involved her two hours round trip in traffic from San Fracisco to Walnut Creek everyday.

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

Yen then began interviewing for tch roles in San Francisco and landed her first data role as marketing analyst at Salesforce in 2016. Salesforce marked as her introduction to data analytics and she quickly realized that marketing wasn’t her long term focus and moved into business operations.

After Salesforce, Yen joined Yelp in a business operaions and strategy analystics role.She later joined the self driving car startup Cruise in 2019 that she states aligned more closely with her interest in people and decision-making.

However, after seven years in high stress field of data analytics, yen was exhausted and realized that level of stress wasn’t sustainable for her.

“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.” she wrote

Transition to enterpreneurship:

While still working at Cruise, Yen enrolled in a coaching programme cin Bay Area and got certified and began taking on clients on the side. In August 2020, she left Cruise and wanted a break from corporate life while leaning into full time coaching.

She launched her first product business in December 2020 called Daily Work Journal which also acted as her first foray in e-commerce. She ran the company till January 2024 before selling it.

She then started Surfers Jewelry and is now is now focused entirely on her e-commerce business.

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.

“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.” she wrote