About Sigmaschool

A small team, against a system that had a century.

The old path into tech costs four years and six figures - and still hands people a certificate instead of a career. We rebuilt that path for the AI era: 90 days, real projects, real jobs. No lecture halls. No gatekeepers. No permission required.

We’re hiring! Join the team

Here to learn rather than to build the school with us? Apply for the next cohort.

100+

Career switchers placed

50+

Active hiring partners

RM 1M+

Production projects shipped

4.9★

Avg rating, 180+ reviews

This is our manifesto

Sigmaschool · Puchong

Prove it.

Six things we believe, and run the whole school on.

“Hendak seribu daya, tak hendak seribu dalih.”
If you want it, a thousand ways. If you don’t, a thousand excuses.

The degree is not a ticket anymore.
Our parents queued and it worked - the paper was rare. Then everybody got one. A credential everybody has is a floor, not an advantage.
Nobody tells you the ticket expired. You find out at 24, in an interview.
Proof replaced paper.
Employers trust a link they can open, click through and try to break. We are in the business of manufacturing that link.
Paper asks to be believed. Proof does not have to ask.
Hand your thinking to AI and you become the commodity.
Everyone gets the same models at the same price. So we do the unfashionable thing first: three months of real fundamentals. AI comes after - and then we go hard.
The model is free. Be the thing that is not.
We are not fixing the system. We are building around it.
Ninety days, not four years - AI compresses the path, not the person walking it. One number runs this place: did the student get there.
Whatever gets them there faster, we will do it.
Average is not a personality. It is a price.
Do exactly what everyone else did and you have agreed to be paid what they are paid. A third of graduates here end up underemployed.
The safest-looking path now carries the worst odds.
No skin in the game, no business selling education.
They sell the certificate, bank the fee, hand over the debt, and get paid either way. We take nothing from employers. Do the work and it still does not happen? We keep going, or you get your money back.
Anyone who profits from your attempt should suffer from your failure.

Reject the queue. Build the skill, then the proof.

Prove it.

We are a small team in Puchong rebuilding how this country gets into tech. If you are somewhere comfortable and something here leaned forward - comfortable is paying you to sit out the decade that decides everything.

We are hiring - come build it

Deric Yee · Founder, Sigmaschool

The Moment

Our parents had to learn the internet.
We have to learn AI.

Every generation gets one technology that quietly re-sorts who gets ahead. Ours arrived faster than any before it.

1985
The spreadsheet
Leaned in: Became analysts, controllers, CFOs.
Waited: Stayed “the one who does the books by hand”.
1998
The internet & email
Leaned in: Reached customers in other countries.
Waited: Waited for the fax to ring.
2010
The smartphone
Leaned in: Built businesses that lived in a pocket.
Waited: Called it a toy for kids.
Now
AI
Leaned in: Ships in a week what took a team a quarter.
Waited: Is about to find out.

The runway keeps getting shorter.

Your parents had years to get comfortable with email. Decades, in the case of the telephone. Nobody was born knowing Excel - they learned it mid-career, at night, feeling stupid for six weeks. Then it was simply how work got done.

AI is that same story, with one difference: the six weeks is now, and the curve is steeper than anything a generation before us had to climb.

Time to reach 100 million users

Lower is faster. Note the last bar.

Telephone

75 years

Mobile phone

16 years

The internet

7 years

Instagram

2.5 years

ChatGPT

2 months

Source: UBS / company disclosures, time from launch to ~100M users

Nobody is coming to give you permission. The people who win this decade won't be the ones with the best credentials. They'll be the ones who picked up the new tools first - and actually built something with them.

The Common Enemy

It was never you.
It was the maze they built.

We have nothing against universities. We have everything against a system that profits from keeping the path into tech long, expensive, and confusing - and then calls it your fault when you don't make it through.

The credential machine

Sells four years and six figures of certainty, then hands you a transcript and says “now go get experience”.

Tutorial hell

Infinite content, zero transformation. You finish the playlist, open a blank file, and freeze.

Vibe-coding hell

AI writes it, it runs, you can’t explain a line of it. Feels like progress. Isn’t.

“Wait until you’re ready”

The most expensive advice in the world. Nobody hands out permission. The window closes while you prepare.

We’re outgunned on every metric except the one that matters.

They have endowments, campuses, and a hundred years of brand. We have a small team, a study hub in Puchong, and an obsession with whether you actually get hired. Here’s the honest scoreboard.

Weeks until you’re job-ready

Drawn to scale.

A CS degree

208 wks

Sigmaschool

12 wks

The scoreboard

Goliath

The old path

David

This path

Time to job-ready

4 years

90 days

What you leave with

A transcript

Deployed products people use

Who teaches you

People who left industry years ago

People who shipped production code this week

Class size

300 in a lecture hall

Capped. Everyone known by name

When you get stuck

Office hours, next Tuesday

A real answer within 24 hours

Who pays us

You, and the employers, and the state

Only you. That’s the alignment

If it doesn’t work out

Good luck

A full year of support - or your money back

Goliath was never beaten by a bigger Goliath. He was beaten by someone smaller, faster, and unwilling to fight on his terms. That's the whole strategy - for us, and for every person who walks through our door.

Why We Exist

Education is broken.
We're building the path it should have been.

Too many people spend years - and a lot of money - chasing certificates, grades, and credentials, and still graduate without the real-world skills needed to create opportunities for themselves.

AI is making this problem even more urgent. The people who learn to use AI to build, solve problems, and ship real work will have a massive advantage. The people who rely only on traditional education, outdated courses, and passive learning will fall further behind.

Becoming AI-native is one of the most important career decisions anyone can make today.

The Sigmaschool team sitting on the floor sharing durian together

Tech changed my life because it gave me leverage. It let me learn, build, create, and access opportunities that would have been impossible otherwise. That's why I believe tech is one of the greatest equalizers in the world.

But learning tech is hard.

Most people don't fail because they aren't smart enough. They fail because:

01They get lost with no path to follow.
02They get overwhelmed by too much information.
03They lose motivation before the skills compound.
04They get stuck in tutorial hell - always watching, never building.
05They fall into vibe coding hell - generating code they don't understand.

Sigmaschool fixes this by giving learners structure, accountability, real practice, and a community that pushes them forward. We help people stop passively consuming content and start building real skills through real projects.

The problem we're solving is simple. People need a better path to career-changing skills in the AI era - one that's practical, structured, accountable, and focused on real outcomes, not just certificates.

The Problem, Sharpened

Three pains
worth paying to solve.

Every real business fixes a pain people can feel. Here are the three that keep serious people up at night - and where Sigmaschool comes in.

Become AI-native before you become outdated.

“I worked hard - but the market is changing faster than my degree, my job, and my skills.”

People can feel AI reshaping work. They just don't know how to become valuable in the new version of it. We make people AI-native before the market makes them obsolete - with the practical skills, structure, and proof to stay relevant.

39%

of workers’ core skills expected to change by 2030

63%

of employers say skill gaps are the #1 barrier to transformation

Source: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs

Employers now hire for AI capability, not credentials.

“My cert or degree doesn’t prove I can actually work in the AI era.”

The market stopped paying people for knowing theory. It pays people who can use AI, build real things, and prove they can solve problems. We turn “I completed a course” into “I can build, ship, explain, and use AI properly.”

66%

of leaders won’t hire someone without AI skills

71%

would pick a less experienced candidate with AI skills over a senior one without

Source: Microsoft × LinkedIn, Work Trend Index

Self-learning is cheap - but most people get lost and quit.

“I tried learning on my own - but I got stuck, overwhelmed, and never became job-ready.”

Content is everywhere. Transformation is rare. Nobody needs another playlist - they need a path, deadlines, feedback, accountability, and real projects that force them to become capable. That's the structure we exist to provide.

$4.09B

global coding bootcamp market in 2026, projected to $6.16B by 2031

+56%

average salary increase reported by bootcamp grads (self-reported — directional)

Source: Grand View Research · Course Report alumni survey

One thesis ties them together. The world is going AI-native, credentials are losing their power, and self-learning leaves most people behind. Sigmaschool is the path that closes all three gaps at once.

What We Actually Do

We build AI-native software builders.
That's what you walk out as.

Our primary outcome is still software development careers - but the way we train people has changed for the AI era.

We don't just teach people to write code. We teach them to understand software, build real products, use AI properly, debug, ship, and prove they can solve real problems.

The job title might be any of these - but the core capability is the same:

Software developer
Frontend developer
Full-stack developer
Product engineer
Technical builder

Use software and AI to build things that create value.

Sigmaschool students building software together with the remote cohort on screen

The Origin Story

It started as a frustration.
Not a business plan.

I was helping friends transition into tech - smart, hungry, disciplined people. And they kept hitting the same wall, over and over.

01No money or time for a 4-year degree.
02Online courses dumped videos with no guidance.
03Platforms taught skills, but not outcomes.
04They could build basic projects - but not navigate ambiguity.
05They had no support when they got stuck.
06They could learn… but they couldn't get hired.

So I built the place I wished existed when I was learning. Somewhere you could learn tech, get mentored, use AI properly, ship real projects, and land real jobs - all in one ecosystem, on one path.

What started as a side project became Sigmaschool. Hundreds of graduates later, the path still works. The standard hasn't moved - only the curriculum has, because AI keeps moving the floor.

Learning alone is hard. Learning with guidance, community, and real-world context isn't. That's the entire bet.
Deric Yee
Founder, Sigmaschool

What We Believe

Seven convictions
that survived contact with reality.

We've taught hundreds of students. These are the principles we won't compromise - no matter what the market is doing this quarter.

01
Coding is fun. Don't kill it.
The moment a curriculum makes coding feel like a chore, you've lost. We protect the joy of building, even when the work gets hard.
02
Computer science matters. Degrees don't.
Fundamentals are non-negotiable. The piece of paper that costs four years and six figures is.
03
You need real projects. You need to deploy.
A localhost demo is a draft. Until someone else on the internet can use what you built, it doesn't count as shipped.
04
You need a curated path, not more information.
The internet has too much. The job of a school is to subtract - not add. We tell you what to skip as much as what to learn.
05
Learning tech is a depth-first journey.
Going wide on syntax helps no one. Going deep on one thing - until you can actually defend it - is what compounds.
06
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Twelve weeks is intense. But the career is decades. We optimise for habits that survive after graduation.
07
The fastest route into tech is a real job with real developers.
No simulation matches working with engineers who care about the code shipping tonight. We aim graduates at that - fast.

What We Refuse To Do

Seven things
we won't compromise on.

A great school is defined as much by what it refuses to do as by what it builds. Here's our list.

We refuse to inflate cohort size.
Quality dies at scale. Every cohort is capped small enough that every student is known by name - and every submission gets reviewed by a real human, not a TA on autopilot.
We refuse to keep instructors who don't ship.
Every Sigmaschool instructor still writes production code today. We don't employ lecturers who haven't touched a real codebase in two years. The curriculum should be taught by people who use it.
We refuse to graduate students who can't defend their code.
No Loom walkthrough explaining what you built, no graduation. Period. We'd rather hold a student back and re-cohort them than print a credential that doesn't mean anything.
We refuse to teach what's already obsolete.
If a framework, pattern, or tool is on the way out, it's out of our curriculum. We rewrite material every cohort. AI moves in weeks - pretending it doesn't serves no one.
We refuse to take placement fees from employers.
If we got paid by both sides, we'd optimise for placements that hurt you. Your tuition is the only money we touch. The financial alignment is the alignment.
We refuse to admit applicants who won't ship.
About 30% of applicants get in. That isn't a marketing flex - it's the math of caring about outcomes. Admitting someone who can't commit is unkind to them and unfair to the cohort.
We refuse to compromise the bar.
We could 10× revenue tomorrow by lowering the standard. We won't. The bar is the moat. The bar is the brand. The bar is the only thing that compounds across cohorts.

Our 3R Brand Promise

Three promises.
Each with a real backstop.

Anyone can promise. We bind ourselves to consequences when we miss.

Promise

Reliable

If you don't get hired in tech after graduation, you get unlimited support for one full year - until you do.

Otherwise, 100% of your tuition back.

Promise

Responsive

Get a real answer to your question within 24 hours of asking. Always.

If we miss that - a meal on us.

Promise

Reputable

Our curriculum is updated every cohort. The bar keeps moving up.

Find better slides than ours? We'll Venmo you RM100. We've never paid out.

The Team

Real practitioners.
Not lecture-circuit professors.

Every instructor still ships production code. Every team member shows up because they want to be here. This is the whole company - all of us, on one screen.

More about Kan↓

Why Sigmaschool

The culture and team bonding were what drew me in, and I’m also inspired by one of the company’s mission to give opportunities to people from underprivileged backgrounds.

Why EdTech

Hearing stories of how education in technology has made the younger generation to be less hardworking but at the same time technology has made it so much more acccesible to people…

Off the clock

Mainly volleyball, dog lover, movie buff and I'm a commitee member of a community service club helping underprivileged kids

Real Moments

We're a community,
not just a curriculum.

Buildrooms, graduations, bouldering, go-karts, durian on the floor - proof that Sigmaschool happens in the real world, not just in tabs.

Sigmaschool team and remote cohort together at the end of a live Buildroom — Buildroom wrap · in-person + remote

Sigmaschool cohort celebrating with balloons at the studio — Graduation day at the studio

Sigmaschool team sitting on the floor eating durian together — Durian on the floor, no agenda

Sigmaschool team playing volleyball on an indoor court — Volleyball night

Sigmaschool team on a video call wearing costumes and silly filters — Costume standup · Online

Sigmaschool team holding helmets at the go-kart track — Go-kart grand prix

Sigmaschool team at the bouldering gym — Bouldering after hours

Sigmaschool team on the pickleball court — Pickleball, unreasonably competitive

Careers · We’re hiring

Come help us
build the sling.

We’re a small team building the team structure we’ll need for the next hundred times our size - and we’re growing fast, because AI keeps multiplying what a small team can do. That means real roles opening up faster than we can post them.

We’re not looking for résumés. We’re looking for people who are allergic to “that’s how it’s always been done” - who’d rather build the thing than sit in a meeting about the thing. Every day here is Day 1.

Day 1 attitudeBuilder, not bystanderAllergic to status quoOutput > opinionsSpeak directly. Move fast.

Apply to join the team

We read every application. We respond - even when it's a no.

The Sigmaschool team playing volleyball together after work

How we work

Startup culture,
meant literally.

Not the ping-pong-table version. The version where six people in a room decide something on Tuesday and customers feel it on Friday.

Low hierarchy

There is no chain of approvals to pitch through. Good idea on Monday, live on Thursday. You talk to the founder directly - because there is nobody in between.

Max ownership

You own outcomes, not tickets. Nobody hands you a spec broken into subtasks. You get the problem, the context, and the trust - and your name stays on it.

Max growth

AI made a small team dangerous. Everyone here does work that used to need five people, and grows at a rate that a big-company ladder physically cannot match.

Small team, big surface

A team small enough to fit around one table. Hundreds of students, 50+ hiring partners, a national reach. The leverage per person is absurd - which is exactly why we hire slowly and carefully.

Low micromanagement

Nobody counts your hours or watches your calendar. We count what shipped and who it helped. Do the work where and when you do it best.

I win when you win

That is not a poster on a wall - it is how we pay, promote, and decide. If the company grows and you drove it, you take part of that upside. We win together or not at all.

“I win when you win. I’m not trying to hire people to work for me - I’m trying to find people who’ll build this thing with me, and grow faster here than they could anywhere else.”
Deric Yee · Founder, Sigmaschool

The bar

Who thrives here.

We hire for instincts, not pedigree. Here's the honest filter - read the right column carefully.

You’ll love it here if…

You start before you feel ready. Permission isn’t coming - go.
You treat "I don’t know how" as the start of the problem, not the end.
You ship, then improve. Good-but-shipped beats perfect-but-late.
You say the hard thing - kindly, fast, and to the right person.
You get a strange thrill from making something work that didn’t before.

You’ll hate it here if…

You need a 12-step process before you’ll touch anything new.
You measure your day in hours logged, not problems solved.
You want credit more than you want the thing to actually work.
You want a lane, a manager, and a script. We can’t give you those.

It’s a startup. Truly.

Wide scope, lean resources, moving goalposts. Some weeks you wear three hats. You’ll own real outcomes early - which means real wins and the occasional “oof, that was me.”

In exchange, you grow fast.

Faster than anywhere with a comfier chair. A direct line to decisions. And work that genuinely changes lives - we have the graduate stories to prove it.

How to apply

No cover-letter theatre.

No “describe a time you faced adversity.” Just tell us three things.

01
Show us something you made
Something you built, fixed, or shipped - and what broke along the way. Side projects count. Scrappy counts.
02
Tell us why this, why now
Why this mission, and why this moment in your life. We care more about the "why" than the CV.
03
Claim your role
Tell us the role you think you’d own here - even if we never posted it. High-agency people define their own lane.

Apply to join the team

The best people never feel 100% qualified. They apply anyway. Your move.

You read this far.

Now go build something
that proves it.

Two doors, same building. Learn to build with us in the next cohort - or come build the school itself. Either way, we look for hunger and clarity, not a CV.

Apply for the next cohort Apply to join the team

~30% acceptance for cohorts. We reply to every application - even when it's a no.

A small team, against a system that had a century.

Prove it.

The degree is not a ticket anymore.

Proof replaced paper.

Hand your thinking to AI and you become the commodity.

We are not fixing the system. We are building around it.

Average is not a personality. It is a price.

No skin in the game, no business selling education.

Our parents had to learn the internet.We have to learn AI.

The spreadsheet

The internet & email

The smartphone

AI

The runway keeps getting shorter.

It was never you.It was the maze they built.

The credential machine

Tutorial hell

Vibe-coding hell

“Wait until you’re ready”

We’re outgunned on every metric except the one that matters.

Education is broken.We're building the path it should have been.

Three painsworth paying to solve.

We build AI-native software builders.That's what you walk out as.

It started as a frustration.Not a business plan.

Seven convictionsthat survived contact with reality.

Coding is fun. Don't kill it.

Computer science matters. Degrees don't.

You need real projects. You need to deploy.

You need a curated path, not more information.

Learning tech is a depth-first journey.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

The fastest route into tech is a real job with real developers.

Seven thingswe won't compromise on.

We refuse to inflate cohort size.

We refuse to keep instructors who don't ship.

We refuse to graduate students who can't defend their code.

We refuse to teach what's already obsolete.

We refuse to take placement fees from employers.

We refuse to admit applicants who won't ship.

We refuse to compromise the bar.

Three promises.Each with a real backstop.

Reliable

Responsive

Reputable

Real practitioners.Not lecture-circuit professors.

Deric Yee

Cassie Linh Ngan Huynh

Amiel Leong

Safa Yousif Abdalla Abakar

Daffi

Eunice Chen Yun Yin

Koh Zheng Hong

Ruben Vikrando

Kan Mun Juen

We're a community,not just a curriculum.

Come help usbuild the sling.

Startup culture,meant literally.

Low hierarchy

Max ownership

Max growth

Small team, big surface

Low micromanagement

I win when you win

Who thrives here.

No cover-letter theatre.

Now go build somethingthat proves it.

Our parents had to learn the internet.
We have to learn AI.

It was never you.
It was the maze they built.

Education is broken.
We're building the path it should have been.

Three pains
worth paying to solve.

We build AI-native software builders.
That's what you walk out as.

It started as a frustration.
Not a business plan.

Seven convictions
that survived contact with reality.

Seven things
we won't compromise on.

Three promises.
Each with a real backstop.

Real practitioners.
Not lecture-circuit professors.

We're a community,
not just a curriculum.

Come help us
build the sling.

Startup culture,
meant literally.

Now go build something
that proves it.