I was recently looking at finance job ads for programmers and the one thing that set the ads apart from 100% of the ads from the companies we all read about here was that they didn't say "competitive salary." They said, "extremely high salary."
I noticed that too. I won't say I'm oblivious to the possibility of a much earlier retirement, but leaving my current job, one I really love, will take more than just that.
Sure, but you could do finance for a short time and then go back to riskier startups, which is the thing I was trying to illustrate with my comment: finance companies appear to be much, much more confident in their viability, or at least are willing to demonstrate their confidence in having a future.
That makes a huge difference.