A few ways to find these jobs is to look for older and maturer companies.
But that is not all, if you manage your management and your teammates right, you can create a good WLB anywhere. Here are a few pointers:
1. Slowdown!!!
You would think you are impressing your boss and teammates by getting it done fast but opposite is happening. They think they assigned you an easy task. At the same time, they will expect you to perform at the same speed going forward.
2. Don't ever send any email after 5pm. Never answer Slack messages when on lunch. Learn to reject meetings at odd times. Manager wants to have a meeting at 5PM, tell them you got plans. No need to explain what those plans are.
Once I met this guy, he would just say I have plans and nothing more. He never ever had to work on weekends, or after 5pm. One time, in a meeting, our manager asked each of us which Saturdays in upcoming quarter are good for working. Everyone volunteered a few Saturdays. When this guy's turn came, he simply said he got plans. The manager's mouth dropped, he asked every single Saturday of next 12 weeks, this guy replied just yes. The manager was so red, it was amazing. Since then I have learned to say I got plans.
3. Don't kill yourself over on-call. The management makes it seems like that if production breaks, then we should drop everything and fix production. No don't fall for it. Oncall makes sense for doctors where people will literally die. But most of IT infrastructure is not that crucial. Even if it is, it is on management to allocate enough resources to build a resilient infrastructure. If they cannot do that, then your personal life comes first.
I learned from my older co-workers who would take hours to fix some small quick jobs after hours. If they got an alert that something is broken, they will finish what they were doing, dinner, playing with kids, out shopping, etc. Sometimes they waited long enough for page to escalate to their manager before starting work. And if it was something that breaks all the time but management was not allocating time to fix it, they would drag it forever until boss's boss is getting paged. Things would get fixed pretty quickly when CTO had to wake up in the middle of night.
4. Don't let anyone in your team get abused. A lot of young programmers and passive people get abused in our industry, they are afraid to say no, work long hours, and sometimes even think that it is normal. The problem is that the management will start getting braver and abusing more people. So if you see your teammate getting abused, find out what's going on. Teach them how to deal with the management abuse. But there are certain people who actually enjoy working all the time. If that's the case then explain to them how their actions are actually encouraging bad behavior from the management. Tell them they should be working on personal projects after work. This may not work always, but that is why I avoid joining a team with too many young people.
I would literally get fired for this stuff. I may end up on a performance plan next year due to being slow. I've seen people get close to being fired (at least given the lowest rating) when not providing off-hours support (if it's a pattern). Hell, I almost got fired for answering my prior department head by saying that my future plan was just to be a midlevel developer since I was working above my level and not getting promoted. He told my manager "fire him", and I only managed to transfer because he tipped me off. I work for one of the 25 best places to work according to computer world.
> I work for one of the 25 best places to work according to computer world.
These ranking are so easy to game. My wife worked at a small recruiting company in Dallas. This company always made it to the lists of best companies to work for in DFW, whether if it was D Magazine, Dallas Observer, or some online poll, this company was always was there.
The way these lists work is that a company submits an application to be included in the list. Not sure if application is free or not, but if application is accepted, the list maker would let the company know when they will email the survey link. My wife's company will always host a huge happy hour party the day before the survey email is supposed to go out. Some people who seems disgruntled will get a free day off. And some people will never get survey link at all. On the day of survey, there will be nice lunch brought in. And finally the owner will make sure that everyone fills out survey same day by scheduling a company wide meeting. During that meeting everyone is supposed fill out their survey while owner and managers are walking around the cubes. Oh and they would give speeches like how hard it is to recruit top talent and how working at one of the best place to work for will look good on their resumes.
And yes some employees are still checking their spam folders for the email link while owner and managers pretend they are troubleshooting.
As for that company, it wasn't bad for work life balance, it was just that the 40 years old owner was a party animal who wanted to party with 20 years old. He would favor people who partied with him at happy hours or went clubbing with him. It was nowhere near the best places to work for in the DFW. Benefits were horrible and if you were not young party animal, it wasn't a good place to be.
But that is not all, if you manage your management and your teammates right, you can create a good WLB anywhere. Here are a few pointers:
1. Slowdown!!!
You would think you are impressing your boss and teammates by getting it done fast but opposite is happening. They think they assigned you an easy task. At the same time, they will expect you to perform at the same speed going forward.
2. Don't ever send any email after 5pm. Never answer Slack messages when on lunch. Learn to reject meetings at odd times. Manager wants to have a meeting at 5PM, tell them you got plans. No need to explain what those plans are.
Once I met this guy, he would just say I have plans and nothing more. He never ever had to work on weekends, or after 5pm. One time, in a meeting, our manager asked each of us which Saturdays in upcoming quarter are good for working. Everyone volunteered a few Saturdays. When this guy's turn came, he simply said he got plans. The manager's mouth dropped, he asked every single Saturday of next 12 weeks, this guy replied just yes. The manager was so red, it was amazing. Since then I have learned to say I got plans.
3. Don't kill yourself over on-call. The management makes it seems like that if production breaks, then we should drop everything and fix production. No don't fall for it. Oncall makes sense for doctors where people will literally die. But most of IT infrastructure is not that crucial. Even if it is, it is on management to allocate enough resources to build a resilient infrastructure. If they cannot do that, then your personal life comes first.
I learned from my older co-workers who would take hours to fix some small quick jobs after hours. If they got an alert that something is broken, they will finish what they were doing, dinner, playing with kids, out shopping, etc. Sometimes they waited long enough for page to escalate to their manager before starting work. And if it was something that breaks all the time but management was not allocating time to fix it, they would drag it forever until boss's boss is getting paged. Things would get fixed pretty quickly when CTO had to wake up in the middle of night.
4. Don't let anyone in your team get abused. A lot of young programmers and passive people get abused in our industry, they are afraid to say no, work long hours, and sometimes even think that it is normal. The problem is that the management will start getting braver and abusing more people. So if you see your teammate getting abused, find out what's going on. Teach them how to deal with the management abuse. But there are certain people who actually enjoy working all the time. If that's the case then explain to them how their actions are actually encouraging bad behavior from the management. Tell them they should be working on personal projects after work. This may not work always, but that is why I avoid joining a team with too many young people.