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I will add that when I was working full time in a fairly moderately busy office I did a little calculation of how many hours I worked on average to get paid. It was not pretty. I recall my wife saying that I would make more money putting the time in a fast food restaurant, and that is when I shifted toward using my knowledge of real estate to make more money from sources other than representing buyers and sellers.
I do think there are a small number of people that have a knack for running an office with lots of listing and making a lot of money as broker -- with enough 'worker bees' that can be a really good life.
There are also a handful of areas where the selling prices are SO HIGH that you can do a smaller number of listings and have a very lucrative business.
In too many other situations the hours needed and the compensation are not good. I think with modern cell phones / email devices there is the potential for more freedom to "be" anywhere but also the curse of never really being unreachable, and as others have said during tense negotiations you HAVE TO BE in constant communication so it is impossible to not be "connected" for many hours a day.
Realistically, unless you have clients in a different time zone, no buyer or seller really wants to talk on the phone after 10PM or so. Similarly although emails sometimes do get sent / received in the middle of the night, no one wants/expects a reply except during normal business hours.
When those emails are coming in a machine-gun like stream it is hard to keep things professional and timely, but that is not too different then when faxes and phone calls were the norm. I think that those who can manage the various technologies can have a moderately successful career and some balance in their lives.
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