I'm a 27 year old Italian guy and currently, I work as a costumer service technician for an Italian internet provider.  I'm currently thinking about a career change, and I think that working as a programmer/developer may be something I'd like. Even though I didn't study programming much, when I did it in high school and later on, I found it enjoyable.

I'm trying to discover what job(s) I may find interesting and enjoyable, and lately I took the Ruby online course at Codecademy, and even though I had difficulties with the last lessons, I enjoyed it.

However, there are a few aspects about the programming field that I'm worried about.  I heard about an overtime culture in the field and about death marches and stuff like that, and I don't think I would like a job that often requires me to do overtime.  I can do a few overtime when it is needed but I don't think I want to work in a field where it is a common practice.

I'd like to have an 08:00-17:00 job, and do a few overtime hours only every now and then when it is actually needed.  In searching on the internet and on this site about how common overtime is in the programming field, I didn't find much, but I have read that in some companies it's possible to work office hours as a programmer, so I have some related questions

 - Are companies like that common?
 - Would it be very hard to find a company like that in your opinion?
 - Do you think that this field is suitable for those who don't
   want do do overtime on a regular basis?
 - How many overtime hours a month you think one would usually end up doing?

I know that if I decide to work as a programmer, I will need to study and learn it at a level that will allow me to do it professionally, so I have questions about other aspects of the job, but I think I'd like to find out about the overtime aspect of the job first.

(Also, at the moment I live in Italy, so I'm going to ask the same question in some Italian forums, but I'd like to also know how this field is around the world, since working abroad is another thing I'd like to do.)