[avgDev]

IMO, if someone thinks you are going to get much work done the first week they are out of their minds, or their software is a trivial console app contained in handful of classes.

I could probably jump into a new position and start cranking out code fast, but it would be different than any code in the existing code base, and could apply techniques not used by anyone on the team. This would result in an awful piece of code to maintain for the team.

There are just so many different ways of writing code that a dev would probably need a few weeks to get comfortable with the code base. I speak openly about this during interviews. One interviewer from a fortune 1k company said I would be given about 6 months to get comfortable with the code base and start with smaller tasks. Another company said I would be building trivial things for a few weeks before touching the codebase.

Unless it is a fresh project there is no such a thing as jumping in and cranking out code day 1.

[saagarjha]

I've written code on day one at some positions. Usually it's something simple like a bugfix or refactor, but it is certainly working code. Of course, most of the time I spend doing this is figuring out how to work with the codebase and how to submit my changes.