I'm in my first year of a lab-based PhD. How long am I supposed to be working every day? And should I be working weekends? How long does everyone here spend at work each week (with/without breaks)? Everyone in my institution seems very keen, but I'm not convinced that people in other places are quite so work-crazy.

9-5 (actually 8.30-4.45) in the lab, no teabreaks and an hour or slightly less) for lunch. I'm proud to say I have only worked in the lab ONE Saturday so far, but tend to do reading etc at the weekend. I rarely work weeknights - had enough of that during my undergrad! I think we've had a few discussions about this on the forum... if I thought that spending longer in the lab would get me more results I would probably do it, but that hasn't been my experience. I'm sticking to 9-5 and whatever results I get that's fine.

approx 9-5 with an hour for lunch

I go in at whatever time (normally 12PM) and come out anytime (normally 7PM). Sometimes I go earlier if I feel like going for lunch with the group or if I have scheduled experiments to conduct. My group is laid back about actual hours, and allows working from home. Yet we complete work and are very productive.

Most of my best work (writing-wise) is done at home. And luckily a lot of my work can be done on a computer/laptop and transfered to the lab during experiments.

It should be more about the quality of what you produce as opposed to the time you take to produce it. Unfortunately some old-fashioned supervisors do tend to expect you to be there 9-5 in order to be able to do work. I am not a morning person so whatever I do in the morning would be nonsense.

Sorry if this has already been discussed - I couldn't see a topic with a title that seemed relevant, but I know how these things tend to wander.

Do discussions get deleted if they're inactive for a while? Maybe that's why I can't see a previous discussion of working hours.