Personally, I'm okay with working overtime, as there are some jobs that are simply cyclic in nature, and you have periods where things come up that need to be dealt with. At my current job, I submit papers and posters for conferences, and so I end up working longer hours both to finish the presentations / posters and to get the software done to that I'm going to be talking about.
I'm also not so keen on the project plan aspect -- some of the best projects I've worked on have been done without planning, because we got it done under the radar without management getting their hooks into it and trying to make it more than it really needed to be.
...
That being said, I think that what it comes down to is that we have to remember that as part of the interview process, you need to size up the potential employer to determine if they're the type of place that you'll want to work. If you're miserable at the job, it doesn't do you or the company any good; but every person has their own pet peeves, and what may be a great job for one person may be hellish for someone else.
The last two interview I had were rather odd, as the last one was for my own job (long term contract, but a new company won the contract), and the time before that it was for a government agency and my first question was "where's the job?" and I didn't see a point in continuing after they told me. For the last one, here are the questions I had typed up to ask them, that were primarily based on areas where I had run into problems in the past:
- Which company are you with?
- What is the organizational chart for the company?
- What is the organizational chart for (name being used for the team of prime + subcontractors)?
- May I get a copy of the (name) winning proposal?
- Why should we work for you?
- Does the company have a mission statement, and if so, what is it?
- What are the goals and objectives of the company?
- What are the procedures for travel reimbursement?
- How is travel billed?
(eg, is travel time billed at full rate, 1/2 rate; portal-to-portal?)
- What are the procedures for tuition reimbursement?
- What benefits do you provide? (tuition / other edu. / certification / leave / retirement / matching funds )
- How much time is allocated for overhead?
( mandatory training / corporate meetings / etc )
- How much growth is in the contract for salary increases per year?
- What is the ratio between the median and highest salaries in the company?
- What are the conditions for which you'll consider raises and/or promotion?
- If awards are given by the customer, how will the award be distributed between the owners (shareholders) / management / other employees ?
- Are there any annual performance based awards?
- If there were to be a winter holiday party, where would it be held?
- What are the procedures for recording hours worked?
- Have your required applications been tested under Section 508 guidelines, and if so, did they meet the requirements? (note -- this was an issue because our office is all mac/linux, and the previous employer had a bunch of IE-only web apps they insisted we use ... although technically, that could still pass 508)
- What will the rules be for leave in the first few days of the new contract?
- What would be the official date of hire? (note -- this was only an issue because we had heard it was to be on Monday, which would give us a 2 day gap in medical coverage)
- Is there a publication bonus?
- What is your pay schedule? (some people prefer 2x per month ... I prefer it tied to change of weeks ... but the question was there because of a previous job where you got paid _3_ weeks after the 2 week pay period ... so you didn't get paid until 5 weeks in))
- Are you going to eat our children? (note -- this was only in the list because they said they knew the types of rumors that go around ... that they're pod people, or we're going to eat your children ... but then they never specifically said they weren't pod people and weren't going to eat our children)