Really? All the sysadmins I've met worked their asses off all the time. Firefighting with too much on the plate & too little time & resources to make it all happen.
The worst is usually the same people get the calls about the primary app server being down as someone's windows box having too many popups.
Totally depends on the company. Some admin jobs are basically NOC and some are more non-stop engineering. Make sure you know which one you're signing up for.
I think sitting in the NOC watching screens and responding to the odd alert might be, but 2nd and 3rd line SAs (and DBAs) are working at at least as hard as the programmers (in fact to borrow an old IBM-ism are "systems programmers").
The worst is usually the same people get the calls about the primary app server being down as someone's windows box having too many popups.