Well, I've certainly had my share of hell. I worked for the creature, for one. There's no greater torture. But to be fair, my long hours and stuff at that job were of my own volition -- I still wanted to actually get some work done, and it was nigh impossible to get any work done while the creature was in the office, so I had to do everything after hours.
Now in Dallas, it was half my fault and half the company. I had my days when I was in a deep crunch that meant not even setting foot in my apartment for nearly a month and having a whip to my back while I was coughing up blood every which way. Worst part is that it was a single-handed crunch. It was a project that I alone was assigned to, and I wasn't even told of its importance until the last moment. Now hiding the fact that I was coughing up blood was my fault... the crunch, the hiding why I had to work on it, the paperwork screwups that ultimately shrank my schedule down from 5 months to 6 weeks... Well, that was hardly the first straw, but I also can't completely blame them. Yes, there was a lot of lying, a lot of nonsensical shifting of blame, and a lot of management decisions which at the face of it, look completely and utterly stupid. But the problem is that this was such a small and underfunded studio that you can largely say that none of it was by choice.
Nowadays, it's not so bad. I hardly ever work late short of my own losing track of time. I do work weekends somewhat often lately, but it's a mix of doing actual work and doing some research on the side. On top of which, quality of life is actually pretty much more in line with typical enterprise software development. It's not like Google with its cafeteria staff of 650+ people, but it's pretty decent. We don't get paid overtime, nor do I even get paid amazingly well for living in the Bay Area, but it's still light years ahead of what I've had in the past. I don't get lied to all the time, and I'm given a lot more latitude to do things as I see fit and be in contact with all my clients all the time. Free gym, the occasional bit of free food, better benefits than a lot of places...
Though it's easy for someone like me to look at this place and paint a picture through rose-colored glasses, that's obviously because of my past perspective. I mean, I'm the guy whose last job outside the game industry ended in the employer shooting himself, and who has worked for some sort of apparently living entity that carried such an indescribable stupidity that I probably grew many shades dumber by being near it.
