sundialsvc4,
Before I call you crazy, let me say that forced overtime sucks and should not be something one just accepts.

No matter what “justification” is proffered in its defense, overtime is (IMHO...) generally the easiest-to-spot sign that a project has been poorly specified, poorly planned, poorly managed, or some combination of the above.

You are crazy. What planet do you live on? Perhaps you have lead a statistically improbably life where the majority of the places you worked got projects completed on time, on budget and feature complete. In general, it is a fairy tale. There isn't any company I know of that consistently is able to meet those standards including Microsoft - the most successful software company in existance. It doesn't matter if you are following CMMI, ISO 9000, ISO 15504, spiral development, waterfall development, eXtreme programming, etc - software projects very seldom are finished on time, on budget and feature complete. That in no way should be the sole indicator that you should walk away from a company or that they won't be great to work for.

I would probably have taken a different approach. Like high cholesterol, overtime can be an early warning indicator of problems ahead. I would then take the analogy further an say that there are both good kinds and bad kinds of cholesterol. That it is important to ask up front about overtime and provide a list of specific questions to ask that might help differentiate between the items raised by JavaFan and BrowserUk from the detrimental to your health kind that you are obviously concerned with.

What is personally important to me is knowing if overtime is mandatory, what compensation is provided and what frequency/duration I can reasonably expect.