Wherever you wind up set a precedent for yourself on day 1 when it comes to live-work balance. It’s so easy to fall prey to unnecessary overtime that no one has asked of you by saying yes at 5:30pm, when there’s no negative repercussions for simply saying, I’ll add to my list for tomorrow.

I worked at Cooper Carry years ago and it was a bit of a grind, though not the worst.  Most of that sweatshop culture is bullshit though.  If you think about the person who promotes it, be it the boss or coworkers, look at who you're trying to impress.  You'll always have to burn the midnight oil at times, and when young it can seem exciting on some wierd JC level, but in the long run it's not worth it because they'll do it to the next person.   

As a PM if I’m handing work off to a junior staff member I take responsibility for managing that person’s time as part of my management of the overall project. If there’s a situation where there’s more work to do than the junior can do, I pick up the slack. The buck stops with the person leading the project, from the drafting to managing client expectations. I don’t get upset at junior staff for leaving at a normal hour, I usually wind up kicking them out or only giving them a finite amount I know they can complete relatively quickly. Anything I’m handing off I can likely do myself in half the time anyway. While some upper staff put pressure on me when I was junior to overwork, I always drew the line at weekends and rather quickly learned to ‘manage’ the people managing me.

My story may be different as I worked for quite some time prior to entering architecture and always found the burnout culture to be wildly counterproductive and not something I’d seen in other industries. I can’t imagine the mindset for those who have only ever worked in burnout arch firms thinking that’s the only way a business can operate.