For the past decade I made it very clear during interviews that I value work-life balance and that in fact it increases my overall productivity. I was never told to fuck-off (And I'm in SV).

In fact any company that "requires" (explicitely or implicitely) employees to work more than 8-9 hours a day should be seen as a huge red flag IMO.

This supposes you can afford to get a job elsewhere. Most people need a job now.

Having and enforcing personal boundaries will change your life. People will respect you for it too, not turn you away.

You will not respect yourself even when your wallet is empty.

That said, it is currently reasonably easy to switch the job in our area.

That's why you (a) interview in batches, and (b) even after you have taken a shitty job that you needed _now_ you keep interviewing.

In the longer run: build up some emergency funds; and always keep interviewing as a low intensity background activity, so you have offers before you need them.

I've always felt that interviewing is a pretty high intensity activity. At least the ones I've been in, which are a parade 5-6 of interviewers asking you to do problems at a whiteboard in hour intervals. At the end of those days, I'm physically and mentally exhausted, and often hungry, as they tend to make me talk right through lunch. I really dread interviews like this.

You are right. My choice of words was confusing:

By low intensity background activity I didn't mean that interviews are easy. I meant to suggest, interview at one company every quarter (or a similar rate).

(Though interviewing does get easier with practice. I usually batch up a lot of applications to different companies when I'm about to seriously look for a new job, and when I'm properly in gear, I breeze through those full day ordeals without too much loss of sanity. After all, there are only so many different technical interviews questions in common use amongst the companies.)

I disagree with your point even if it's exaggerated. I'm a HS grad with about a decade of experience. At least for the past five years, I can find a decent job at a startup making well into the six figures at will. Last time I got laid off, I had multiple competitive offers a little over a week later. This was all from cold online applications, and I was not living in a strong market like San Francisco or Boston. I have no LinkedIn or references and I don't network. Granted, I'm pretty good at this and interview _really_ well, but what I just described would be impossible in most other white collar-ish industries, and a total pipe dream for a HS grad.

Unicorns definitely have it easier, but eg Google hires so many people these days that they have long exhausted the supply of unicorns. Nine to five and cushy job is definitely possible in today's job market---especially if you are willing to move cities or country.