(I'm not necessarily suggesting you answer these publicly. They're the questions I'd try to ask myself in a similar situation. :)
Thanks for the provocative questions! I've definitely been struggling with all of them before deciding to post! I'll give them a shot below.
What's your status & plans w.r.t. kids?
We want kids, and we want to try in the next year or two! :-) This complicates things a lot obviously. One or both of careers might take the back burner once we have kids. Neither of us has a strong sense of how family and career will balance yet, so this could be a catalyst to really figure things out. We are hypothetically open to any and all ways of raising a family (she or I stay at home, try to work part time, nanny, day care, don't know until we try it out). I keep hearing that kids change your priorities. Once they change, we can adapt :-)
Have you and your wife done long distance before? How does she feel about the idea, and how does it work in with the combination of each of your career and family plans?
Nope, and we're not pysched about the distance thing. Work is willing to be flexible, though not sure what that means yet. They could potentially fly me home every Friday. This could potentially only be for one year as well. Work is willing to be flexible with locations -- after year one we could relocate to 1 single location for next 3 years and they would cover the relo cost. This is the first year of the program, so they are kind of figuring it out too.
What happens if you decide the geo issues suck and you don't want to do it anymore?
I've thought about this a lot too. A few different options: I tell them I'm not moving again, either we work out a location, or I get out of the program. This could mean I take a different job internally, either a promotion, or a slower track job. Or it could mean I leverage this experience to try to get a really good job externally. I think it plays well in the job market: they have chosen .001% of all employees for the program, dedicated extensive resources to building my executive abilities, but at the end of the day we want to have a family and can't uproot our lives every single year with no sense of where we'll be a year later.
What do you like to do other than your job, and how will this affect those things, positively or negatively?
I have a lot of hobbies, interests and friends/family that will be impacted by these roles. This is a negative, but currently I dread going into work, so if the experience turns out to be as positive as it can potentially be, taking the role could still be a net positive (better working life, good but limited time personally).