um thats pretty much the IT industry in Australia, I've worked weekends and public holidays unpaid as well. I think work life balance is a hit or miss. Some companies like facebook have good balance, some parts of Google and Microsoft can feel tiring, it all depends on the team, project and company in general. Most product companies won't do that cause their employees will leave and the cost to re-hire good talent takes months and lots of $$$ in recruiters commission lost.

The consultancies are famous for really bad work conditions, but yeah I've had lots of jobs with this. I think its fair to say all permanent job contracts have "reasonable additional hours" added in but it can mean an extra hour or your entire weekend depending on how replaceable you are and how much your company cares about keeping you hired.

I've reached a stage in my career, where I don't need to work crazy hours and extra hours, cause my experience compensates for weekend labour. It would take some companies about 1.5 - 2 months to find similar candidates. I can (and I have) found new jobs within 3-5 days and a couple of phone calls, I get about 5-20 cold calls & emails from recruiters every month.

The bottom line is this is a fact of life in every permanent job, tech or non tech.