I don’t know enough about the capital-FIRE group, but any techies around me who want to “retire” early in reality want to go back to just treating tech as a hobby. I think there’s a subtly different “financial independence so I can quit working for the big guy” mentality that gets lumped into the FIRE acronym, even though in this version people are likely to retain skills and connections that should in theory give them some edge if they ever need/want to go back.

But yes: risk is always a part of the game.