Don't scar on the first cut - Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

• Policies are "organizational scar tissue" from "This Can Never Happen Again" mandates—codified overreactions to unlikely-to-repeat situations
• They demean people's intellect ("I know this is stupid, but...") and remove the ability to handle situations with context and judgment
• Alternative: embed learning as stories with context instead of rules—stories engage listeners and inform future decisions without removing agency
• Works best in small creative firms with stable teams; scales poorly but that's a feature not a bug—if you need extensive policies, you might have a hiring problem
• "Because The Policy Said So" is not a valid answer unless you want to treat adults like five-year-olds

DHH argues that most organizational policies are knee-jerk reactions to isolated incidents—"scar tissue" that forms when something goes wrong once and management declares "This Can Never Happen Again." The problem isn't policies in general, but these reactive policies that compound over time into the bureaucratic rigidity everyone claims to hate. They're expensive in ways people don't count: they insult the intelligence of employees who must follow obviously stupid rules, and they strip away the ability to handle situations with appropriate context and judgment.

His alternative framework is deceptively simple: when something goes wrong, have a conversation about it and embed the learning as a story rather than a rule. Stories have context, engage the listener, and inform future decisions without removing human judgment from the equation. This preserves what he calls "the intellect of the executer"—the ability to think "this situation is similar but different, so I'll adapt the lesson appropriately" rather than "I sympathize, but the policy says..."

The approach works best in small creative firms with low turnover where organizational memory can be maintained through culture rather than codification. DHH explicitly positions this as a minority approach—37signals uses Ruby/Rails (minority technically), no policies (minority culturally), no functional specs (minority operationally). The comment thread reveals the tension: people from large companies argue policies are necessary at scale, but DHH counters that if you need extensive policies to manage "idiots," the real question is why you're hiring and keeping idiots rather than firing them and healing the organization. The philosophy assumes you hire smart people and trust them to use judgment—if that's not your reality, you have a hiring problem, not a policy problem.