Developement-wise, I can hang with the 20 something crowd, no problems. I just can't compete with the single/no kids thing.
I encounter people and teams that are just unwilling to adopt contemporary development and deployment practices. The article notes that Hipchat was a struggle to get approval for, yet I often run into people at CMS that never log in to it and prefer tons of emails. Deployments aren't automated and still happen for some teams on calls during maintenance periods once a week. I've had people in technical capacities ask what GitHub is.
The problem is institutional, it really has nothing to do with young people working 10 hour days. I care about my work-life balance -- I'm too old to crash on the couch at my startup's office like I did at past jobs in my 20s -- but I also keep up with contemporary development practices, make a point to study a new language every year, read academic papers, and care about my work. I don't think I can say the same about most devs I've encountered in government. The consulting firms are incentivized to build walls and protect the way they do business in order to keep getting that contract money.
If you're an older dev that is intellectually curious in the practice and art of software development I think you'll be fine.
the problem is that labor doesn't scale very well. 2 talented young programmers working all-out 12 hours a day on one project will generally be more productive than 3 talented folks with family working all-out 8 hours a day. (Agile, git, etc. all try to fix this to a degree... ) The current economic situation is that startups have very very deep pockets and will pay an insane premium to have stuff ASAP - which will mean very small, very overworked, very talented "rock stars".
If you want to fix healthcare.gov and the president's reputation is on the line, you'll get the rockstarest rockstars you can find and slave drive them till it's done
If you want a good work life balance I recommend the defense sector - but again - expect a pay cut. (like $120K end of career in SoCal vs. $250K in SF)
Driving young programmers through 12 hour days is just a recipe for burn out and technical debt that you'll have to pay back later. I've definitely been there.
I guess it all comes down to what you consider a good work-life balance. For me being able to work from wherever an Internet connection exists and the ability to make my own hours is it, and yeah sometimes that'll mean a few weeks of 10-12 hour days here and there. For some it means a strict 9-5 with an hour lunch at an office park off a highway, which I don't judge, but for me sounds like a nightmare.
Again, as long as you're keeping up with contemporary development practices and are pushing your knowledge I think you'll be able to choose whatever definition of work-life balance is for you and be fine.