Its nothing about overly ambitious, its about what you said: a stable work-life balance. Start up culture has lead us to believe that if you don't work 100 hour

Its nothing about overly ambitious, its about what you said: a stable work-life balance. Start up culture has lead us to believe that if you don't work 100 hour weeks, you don't want it bad enough or you don't care; that's patently false. If you really need to work 12 hour days to get something done you need to examine how you work. I guarantee you that you could improve your tools (knowledge of your tools), change the way you develop software or spend less time playing foosball and more time in front of the screen. I'm not against working a 10 hour day when a system is down or if something crashes that needs fixed: I'm against doing it everyday. No one is going to be like "Oh I wished I had worked more" when they are on their death beds, and I wish people would start thinking long term and about their health and future.