Looking for career advice (software developer)

I think you should take a step back and decide if you really want a job that doesn't seem to jibe with your personal work ethic and preferences. If you hate working long hours, why take a job that you know is going to involve long hours? Even if you land the job, how long are you going to stick around before it burns you out? And then you're back to where you started: looking for jobs again. Too many people think only in the short term when looking for work. It's hard to blame them, given the dire straits in which many people find themselves in this job market. Nevertheless, try to plan your moves 5 years out. Think of your career like a chess match. You're not going to win by thinking on a move-by-move basis. You need a long-term strategy to guide your short term actions. As far as what hours you can realistically expect to work in web or software development? It really depends. I can tell you, from knowing quite a few engineers at major software companies on down to startups, that the hours can get long. But it's sort of a feast or famine thing. There will be weeks when you're working insane hours, and there will be weeks when you don't have much to do. On average, though, the hours probably add up to many more than those of your typical 9-to-5 gig. Another thing to consider is that, if you're feeling underpaid, you're probably not going to experience a huge salary jump at a company chock full of "techy" perqs like a game room, catered lunches, etc. Those are the sorts of things that tech companies deploy to keep underpaid workers happy. The real money in tech doesn't come from salary, anyhow. It'll come if and when you start your own company or join a small startup, stick around through a liquidity event, and cash out. So I wouldn't look at these sorts of development jobs for the money, per se.

Off-topic, but do you really want to do web development? I can just picture tons of that stuff getting outsourced. It would seem like a waste of your education and skills to do that kind of work. Regardless, it's impossible to answer any questions about what type of hours to expect because that really depends on how well the company is run. In game development and other undertakings of a large size, it's very common to enter "crunch time" towards the end of a project that basically means living at the office. For web marketing company thought I just don't see it unless they're poorly run or constantly trying to do things without assigning enough manpower. Web-based projects, once you start doing a fair number of them, are far easier to budget time and resources for than a new operating system or video game. It's very easy to budget/plan due to the repetitive nature of the projects. That's also why i'd slit my wrists before doing web development as a career, but to each his own, I suppose... FYI I'm not a full-time developer so what I write isn't gospel. It comprised about 50% of my job duties.