The job market for professors in CS right now is great. No need for a postdoc and only a few pubs will get you multiple offers from R1 univerisities in the US.
Wow, that's incredible. I didn't get that impression from the CS PhD students I've met, but I'll take your word for it. But you'd still need a PhD, no? And grad school is definitely not a great place for work/life balance.
Grad school (and tenure-track) isn't considered great for work/life balance, but it seems mostly self-induced. If I had limited myself to 40 hours a week in grad school I think I would have been just as successful.
Anyone I know that wanted a tenure-track position did get one (and had options). I graduated from an unranked department and had a positive experience on the market.
(I'm a CS prof.)