📋 Template
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Beginner
This is the lean counterweight to GitLab: a real, Creative-Commons handbook you can fork today, written as short human sections (Getting Started, How We Work, Making a Career, Our Rituals, Benefits) instead of a 40-page policy PDF. 37signals deliberately ran with no handbook for over 10 years and only wrote one when new hires felt lost past ~50 people, so it captures exactly the decisions-and-defaults tone you want. Copy the section list, delete what does not apply to a 5-person Indian team, and add your India specifics (leave policy against actual holidays, PF/ESI once you cross thresholds, notice period).
The 37signals (Basecamp) Employee Handbook
From GitHub (basecamp/handbook) by 37signals 30 min read
- A handbook can be short, human, and voice-driven rather than a legalistic policy document, and still cover the essentials
- 'How We Work' plus 'Our Rituals' are the sections that actually get read: how decisions and feedback happen, not HR boilerplate
- It is Creative Commons and forkable, so you start from a working structure instead of a blank page, then localise for Indian statutory bits
