While sometimes coding policies can be nit-picky they can sometimes be very useful. One place I worked at had no coding standards either. The result was code that no one understood or could support. It was fairly common to have 1 subroutine to be 2000 lines! I repeat 2000 lines! What the hell!

I am not saying coding standards are going to everything, but without them, the quality can very greatly depending on the skill level of the programmer...