[itamarst]

Work/life balance issues are something I care a lot about it (in fact, I wrote a book about it: https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/).

So I've walked away from jobs where it was clear I wouldn't have work/life balance.

E.g. one company told me: "We don't want to, but we're working 50/60 hour weeks. We had everything planned out and then a big customer had a big feature request and it blew through our schedules."

Good planning involves setting goals, but also making sure you have time and resources available to deal with unexpected problems, because there will be unexpected problems. To lose one weekend to an emergency may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose all of them looks like carelessness. And I didn't want to be working long hours because of what was clearly bad planning.

(Sometimes you can catch warning signs in advance: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/10/14/job-you-dont-hate/)

[bernardino]

I definitely agree. As I plan to find my first software engineering internship then my first entry-level software engineering gig, work/life balance comes at first priority. While it may seem untraditional or odd particularly for those working in tech, after work, I would like to do something else than sit in front of a device or even think about new technologies, code, etc. Which is not say I don’t enjoy the latter. I just find life is too short to have dedicated my life to a certain job, neglecting other aspects of my life, and only to find at the end of my life that ultimately all my labor amounted to nothing.

A high school friend of mine just graduated from Berkeley this past fall. He starts a finance job in San Francisco in July, where he is working 60-80 hours a week. I haven’t asked him if he cares about work/life balance but I assume he thinks this what people do. I’ll have to ask him.

[keyboardhitter]

This is a major reason why I wanted to hear other people's stories: because it can be so hard to discern what a healthy work environment looks like during the interview process. In your example mentioning 40h+ work weeks is pretty clear though, heh. Thank you for your input and the links, will check out your work.