"Loathsome", really? It may be obvious to you, but it demands a level of specificity that the interviewer is much less likely to lie about. Every company will tell you that they have a good work life balance because that's a completely nebulous claim. If you ask about after-hours communication they're more likely to give you an accurate answer.
It's like if I ask you "do you think you're a good person" where you have a financial incentive to justify why you're a good person and a disincentive to just why you aren't. You're going to emphasize the good points and neglect the bad points to make yourself look the best. Company recruiters are evaluated on equivalent metrics (at least indirectly) so of course they'll give you the sunshine-and-rainbows view of the business. The more direct your question, the more egregious any lie becomes, so the more likely you are to hear the truth.
I worked at a company known for over-working employees (mostly technical, non-devs, though) where the HR recruiters would always go on and on about only ever having to work 45 hours a week max during release pushes... then in orientation the (9-10 figures net worth) CEO told you that they "didn't believe in a work-life balance", and they favored a "work-life integration" instead. Those are obviously complete opposites, and a more direct question to the recruiters could have revealed that discrepancy. In fact that disgusting lie of omission turned me off from the company so much that I found a job elsewhere pretty soon thereafter.
The goal as an interviewer is not to trigger the "HR alarms" that require you to lie or spread the truth thin. If you ask a quantifiable question like "how often do people work over 40 hours?" you're more likely to get a truly revealing answer.
It's like if I ask you "do you think you're a good person" where you have a financial incentive to justify why you're a good person and a disincentive to just why you aren't. You're going to emphasize the good points and neglect the bad points to make yourself look the best. Company recruiters are evaluated on equivalent metrics (at least indirectly) so of course they'll give you the sunshine-and-rainbows view of the business. The more direct your question, the more egregious any lie becomes, so the more likely you are to hear the truth.
I worked at a company known for over-working employees (mostly technical, non-devs, though) where the HR recruiters would always go on and on about only ever having to work 45 hours a week max during release pushes... then in orientation the (9-10 figures net worth) CEO told you that they "didn't believe in a work-life balance", and they favored a "work-life integration" instead. Those are obviously complete opposites, and a more direct question to the recruiters could have revealed that discrepancy. In fact that disgusting lie of omission turned me off from the company so much that I found a job elsewhere pretty soon thereafter.
The goal as an interviewer is not to trigger the "HR alarms" that require you to lie or spread the truth thin. If you ask a quantifiable question like "how often do people work over 40 hours?" you're more likely to get a truly revealing answer.