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I am a midlevel tech trans associate in NorCal. I have one more round of interviews left for a fairly specialized in-house position at a large tech company in SV. The company is known to have comparable hours to biglaw. Compensation is actually a bit higher than my current biglaw salary. The expected base salary is mid $200K, which doesn't include equity, bonus, and 401K matching. Type of work is interesting and probably good for my career since I don't intend on making partner. I was already planning on looking for an in-house position after bonuses were paid out when this opportunity came up. My main reservation is that I want to live in SF and don't want to deal with the commute. I would also be missing out on my firm bonus. Obviously it's a little premature, but would it be stupid to pass this up and hope I could find something similar later on? My colleagues have all had a fairly easy time finding solid in-house exits...although the compensation here is a bit higher than normal.

I cant possibly think of a reason why you shouldn't take this job.

The job sounds like a gem. Take it if you get the offer. Try to negotiate a higher salary by saying you are forgoing your bonus at the firm to make the move. As for the commute, it sucks but the job is probably worth the pain.

I'd take it and I'd personally move, but I am SUPER adverse to commutes. Also moving a lot as a child made me realize you can really live anywhere without being miserable.

Are the hours actually comparable to biglaw? I think that would undermine a lot of the benefit for me.

I have the same reservations as the poster above. If hours are really at all close to BL, I'd personally also rather wait it out. That's especially given the fact that I also am in SV and want to GTFO and hate commutes. The commutes out here suck, as I'm sure you're already aware. Add on top of that foregoing a bonus and I'd definitely do an internal reassessment.

I'm at a big SV corp firm and exits have generally been very good around here lately. While I don't know how frequently jobs offer comp like that, I would think you could get a decent package, with less hours, and a better location down the road. But obviously there's risk there and this is a very personal decision.

I'd take it, but that commute is going to SUCCCCCCK. Especially if you have big law hours. Getting on a train for an hour at 10pm to get home after 11 then to get back on that train at 7:30am will BLLOWWWW.