Accepting Professional Track vs Tenure Track

[whileweareasking]

Along the same lines as recent questions:

Would you take a professional track (long-term, renewable, but non-tenure-track) position at a place that was a very good/seemingly near perfect fit with what you are looking for in terms of an institution, or a tenure-track position at a place that was, say, a medium fit.

The possibility of tenure is obviously a huge plus, and I'm also guessing there are other associated positives such as relative job mobility - it's probably easier to move from one tenure-track job to another than to move from a non-tenure-track to a tenure-track (or perhaps even another non-tenure-track). But does it always trump other factors? And if not, how much would you weight it?

[passing it on]

I was faced with a similar decision when I was on the market and my dissertation chair said plainly that one can always jump off the tenure track later, but getting on it later is nearly impossible, and he encouraged me to take the tt job if even just for a year or two to see how it worked.

That said, the non-tt job was the kind of opportunity that would likely come up again. I don't know if it feels like that for you, but I'd recommend the tt job now (if the fit and track are the only factors you're looking at, as COL, region, etc. might also factor in).