I've left these "time to lean, time to clean" jobs in the dustbin of my teens where they belong. It's a seller's market for us geeks right now; we should take advantage of it while it lasts and find good conditions for ourselves to work in.
I put together these questions for my job search and they have worked ok for me.
"What has turnover looked like in the past year?"
Sweat shops have high turnover, press for a number for this question.
"What are your on call expectations? How do you manage incidents out of hours? How frequently do incidents like that happen?"
If they don't mention comp time or anything like that during those three questions they probably don't offer it, and if incidents happen with any frequency you can assume you will work a good bit of unplanned overtime.
"How is my work evaluated?"
The harder the criteria here the less likely they use butts in seats management. If it's someone vauge about "how well you collaborate with the team" or similar it's probably a subjective measure probably related to if your butt is where they expect it to be when they look.
