About Sigmaschool / For our team

How we work.

How we work Join the team
Group photo at Sigmaschool in front of the Sigma School wall
Deric Yee, Founder of Sigmaschool

Deric Yee

Founder, Sigmaschool

My name is Deric, Founder of Sigmaschool and I want to welcome you onboard to our team. I also want to share my thoughts on education and how we in Sigmaschool are helping transform lives.

Great education makes a real difference. The primary thing that pushes civilizations forward is education and information. Without education or knowledge being passed on, we wouldn’t have all the wonders that we have today. From the iPhone to skyscrapers to AI. Ever since humans learned to pass down knowledge, education has been essential to us developing as a nation or as a species.

At Sigmaschool, we aspire to transform lives. We don’t teach or be in the education industry just to run classes. We want to literally see someone’s life trajectory transformed due to our presence and contribution.

We want people to be able to learn a new skill in 3 months and get a job 1 month after that.

This will fundamentally change lives. But it’s no easy feat. To help us succeed, we need a great team. This is our Sigma culture. This document is about that culture, and how we can continuously improve as a team so that we can better serve our members.

The thing we most value is working with talented people in highly creative and productive ways. That’s why our core philosophy is people over process, and why we try to bring great people together as a dream team. Of course, any growing business requires some process and structure. But with our people-first approach, we can be more flexible, creative and successful in everything we do.

02 / HOW WE WORK

How we work

Our goal: To make the best place to learn to code and launch a tech career. The most effective, the most fun, the most job-focused.

Now, let’s talk about how to succeed with your work at Sigmaschool.

1.Who we want to work with

  • We only work with the best people (like top 5%). Life’s too short to work with mediocre people. That doesn’t mean the most experienced people. But it does mean people who are really good, who get better fast, and who go hard.

  • People who own their work. If your project isn’t getting done on time, or it’s not good enough - that’s on you. Own it. We’ll do everything we can to help, but you gotta take responsibility.

  • If you’re not doing well, we’ll let you know, and we’ll work with you to improve. If it’s still not going well, we’ll part ways. Mediocre people are a cancer to a team, and they turn even the best people into mediocre people over time.

  • You do what you say. Your word is a contract. If you say you’ll do something by Friday, it’s done by Friday. If you can’t, you renegotiate before the deadline. You don’t overpromise to look good in the moment. Your reputation here is built on follow-through, not talk.

  • Professional pride in operational excellence (the things nobody sees). Clean systems. Good documentation. Clear processes. Predictable releases. Stable infrastructure. It’s the discipline of preventing fires instead of putting them out. It’s doing the small, boring things well because they compound into reliability. Students may never see the internal machinery, but they will feel the smoothness. Operational pride is simple: if you touch something, you leave it cleaner, clearer, and more stable than before.

  • Self-Update by Default. Nobody should have to chase you. You proactively update on progress, delays, and decisions. If something slips, you tell people early, not after the deadline. Rule: If others need to ask you “any updates?” more than once, something is off.

  • Hands-On in the Search for Solutions. No “I don’t know” full-stop. You Google, test, experiment, and propose options. You try things before asking someone to spoon-feed you. When you ask for help, you bring what you’ve already tried.

2.How we communicate

  • Anything that can be async, should be async. Don’t turn something that should have been a GitHub reply or a Whatsapp message into a meeting or a phone call.

  • We push updates. We don’t wait for someone to poll us. We tell people when we’re done if they’re waiting on us, and we give frequent updates if we’re taking longer than expected.

  • We communicate in public. Don’t send a DM unless it needs to be private. If its about work, keep in it a public channel so everyone can follow along if they want to. This drastically reduces the amount of sync-up meetings we need. If it affects more than 1 person, it doesn’t belong in DMs.

  • We communicate in writing. Not only is writing better for record keeping and knowledge sharing, but it forces you to think about your proposals and questions more deeply and articulate your points more clearly.

  • Sometimes a quick real-time discussion is best. This tends to be the case when there are a lot of unknown unknowns, the requirements are still unclear. The more anticipated back and forth, the more likely a real-time discussion is best. But the output of the discussion should probably be written down.

  • We read WhatsApp. We have a good pulse on the discussion in our internal channels, and a decent pulse on what’s happening in our student channels. If you’re always needing to be caught up, you’re not doing a good job of staying in the loop.

  • We are responsive. We respond as soon as we can, within reason. We weigh the quickness of our response time against the criticality of the message and what it would pull us away from.

  • We do the work before we hand it off. We don’t make our problems someone else’s problems. We research, take first steps, and come up with potential solutions before asking for help or handing something off.

3.We add personality and be ourselves

  • We don’t use corporate language when chatting with students.

  • We don’t write content that presents facts without personality. Regurgitating information is not useful anymore. Information is everywhere.

  • We aim to surprise and delight. That means being yourself when interacting with students, and having a lot of fun with it.

4.We avoid multitasking

  • Multitasking is a lie and a waste of energy. Work on one thing, and finish that thing, then work on the next. Only switch if you’re blocked, something else becomes more important, or you need a mental break from the current task (e.g. creative work).

  • We break projects down into small tasks. You should be completing most tasks in a day or less. If you’re not able to, you’re probably not breaking them down enough.

  • We optimize for delivery. It’s better to finish a task today than to get 25% of the way through your next one. Fewer things in-flight, higher frequency of completion.

5.Decision making

  • We have opinions, and fight for them. We have strong opinions, but we don’t expect for our idea to win unless we make a case for it - which is best done with data, examples, and great reasoning. When our idea doesn’t win, we disagree and commit to supporting the decision that was made.

  • 80/20 rule in all things. Perfect is the enemy of done. Always shoot for 90% of the value, and cut the stuff that would add marginal value but take a lot more time.

  • Quality is more important than quantity. But there are usually ways to get 90% of the perceived quality in 10% of the time by understanding what really moves the needle.

  • Blast radius: If your plan fails, how bad is it really? You’d be surprised how many things have a teensy-tiny blast radius and yet people are scared to just go for it. This goes the other way as well: aim for asymmetrical risk/reward.

  • Know your numbers. If you’re in product, you should know retention, signups, funnels, difficulty spikes, etc. If you’re in marketing your should know revenue, CPC, CAC, LTV, etc. You should know the important ones by heart, and know how to find the rest quickly.

6.Figure it out

  • If you can’t find the answer to a problem, dig more. Don’t give up because you heard a soft no, or because the first couple google searches didn’t yield amazing results. Dig more than you think you should. There is a point where it’s not worth it to dig deeper, but most people give up before that point. Again, 90/10 rule, stop at diminishing returns.

  • Be really really resourceful. That doesn’t mean you can’t ask questions, but google it first, gippity it first, dig a little. Take unorthodox approaches, and do the weird manual thing. Do the thing that doesn’t scale. If you’re trying to get in contact with someone, don’t just email them, not get a response, and give up. Send them a follow up email. Find them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Find an office phone number. Come up with a better hook to get their attention. See if you know someone who knows them. Think it through and figure it out. People are surprisingly reachable if you’re creative and persistent.

  • Don’t make your problems someone else’s problems. Do everything you can to make your coworkers’ lives and jobs easier, not harder.

7.Use the product

  • It doesn’t matter what your role is at Sigmaschool, you should be learning on the platform. There isn’t a single role here that can get away with not knowing a lot about our platform, product, and content.

  • Along the same lines, you should know our students. The best place for this is via Whatsapp, but there are a lot of ways to get in touch with students - via email, in feature requests, bug tickets, or GitHub issues, on Instagram, in YouTube comments, or on calls with students. Sometimes it's tempting to implement a technical solution to a problem, when the better and faster and easier solution is to just talk to the students and deal with it manually.

8.Don’t stop learning

  • You should be personally growing and improving faster than Sigmaschool is. If you’re not, you’ll get left behind.

  • You should be reading, watching, listening to talks and podcasts, and generally just learning all the time. Be a part of communities that practically force you to stay up to date. If you need a book or a course, we can get that for you. Don’t expect best practices, great ideas, and experience to just come to you because the time on your resume is ticking up. You’ve got to be curious and genuinely enjoy getting better at what you do.

9.Flexibility with Accountability

  • You can control your own working style. We don’t track hours or require constant check-ins. But flexibility only works when you consistently deliver your outcomes.

  • You’ll always have autonomy. If you do good work, on time, without needing reminders.

  • Flexibility is earned. If output slips, flexibility tightens.

10.Trust (The most important currency) with Performance

  • You are trusted. And trust is earned through reliability.

  • Say what you will deliver, deliver it, and communicate along the way.

  • We don’t micromanage, because we assume everyone here is a professional who honors commitments.

  • If doubts appear, we don’t ignore them. We address performance quickly so the team is never left guessing.

11.Freedom with Ownership

  • You are encouraged to take initiative, propose solutions, and move things forward.

  • But once you take on something, you own it until it’s shipped, including the messy parts: problems, blockers, coordination, fixes.

  • No hand-off thinking. No “not my job”.

  • Ownership means you carry it to done.

If you value autonomy, take pride in your work, and communicate clearly, you will thrive here. If you need heavy management, reminders, or emotional babysitting, you won’t.  We choose adults who act like adults.

03 / OUR JUST CAUSE

Our Just cause

Sigmaschool exists to reshape Southeast Asia’s economic landscape by making tech careers accessible to anyone with the drive to learn.

The world we’re building is one where your origin no longer decides your destiny, where a student from a small town, a working adult stuck in a dead-end job, or an SPM leaver with no connections can build real skills, create real projects, and earn a high-value tech career through pure effort and guidance.

We see a future where Southeast Asia becomes known not for cheap labor, but for world-class digital talent. A region where employers proudly hire local developers, analysts, data engineers, and automation specialists,  not because they’re “cost-effective,” but because they’re excellent.

Sigmaschool is here to build that talent bench at scale.

We envision thousands of learners logging into our platform daily, guided by real industry professionals, building real-world projects, and leveling up with the confidence that every line of code brings them closer to a better life.

We imagine alumni across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and beyond, holding good jobs, supporting their families, breaking generational ceilings, and becoming the kind of people who say, “Sigmaschool changed everything for me.”

Inside our company, the vision is equally clear.

We are a team of builders who believe deeply in our mission.

We operate with clarity, accountability, and speed.

Everyone knows how the business works, how money is made, how value is created, and how their role contributes to the bigger picture.

No confusion. No wasted motion. Just a team moving in the same direction, for the same cause.

We wake up driven by the knowledge that our work expands opportunity. We go to bed knowing that what we build today will outlive us.

This is bigger than coding. This is about social mobility, at scale.

This is about rewriting what’s possible for the people in this region.

That is the world Sigmaschool is here to create.

That is the vision worth building.

That is the future worth risking everything for.

04 / OUR VISION

Our vision

A world where anyone can transform their life & earn a living through practical, industry-ready tech skills, regardless of background or starting point.

05 / OUR MISSION

Our mission.

To train motivated individuals through project-based learning, real-world mentorship, and a career pathway that connects them directly to hiring partners, empowering them to launch high-value tech careers.

Sigmaschool. Learn real skills & build real careers in tech.

06 / CORE VALUES

Core values.

We hire and fire based on these core values.

Reliability is everything

This value is about whether others can depend on you once work has started.

Behaviours:

  1. You proactively update others early on progress, delays, and blockers without needing to be chased.
  2. You hit deadlines or renegotiate early (never last minute), and you fix issues quickly with solutions.
  3. You fix issues immediately and take responsibility until the problem is fully resolved.

Examples:

  1. A designer informs the team early in the morning that a draft needs an extra day and provides the new timeline immediately.
  2. A marketer realises a post cannot go out on time, notifies the team a day earlier, and provides a ready alternative post.
  3. An engineer discovers a bug after merging and stays on it until the entire flow is stable again, without waiting for someone else to catch it.

Greater standard

This value measures the quality of what you produce, your rate of learning, and having high standards without self-limiting beliefs.

Behaviours:

  1. Your work is correct, clear, and improving week by week.
  2. You research best practices, learn fast, use new tools/methods, and fix mistakes so they don’t repeat.
  3. You catch issues before others see them and deliver work that makes the whole team better.

Examples:

  1. A designer’s files get progressively clearer each week. Cleaner components, clearer naming, and fewer revisions needed.
  2. A developer who has never used a library before learns it over the weekend and applies it, instead of saying “I don’t think I can do this.”
  3. An instructor reviews their slides and notices outdated examples. They update them before class, improving the experience for students and co-instructors."

Proactive by default

This value is about taking action before being asked. Not about quality. Not about reliability. Not about alignment.

Behaviours:

  1. You begin actions on your own, communication, planning, research, or execution, without waiting for reminders, permission, or follow-ups.
  2. You push work forward on your own initiative , anticipating next steps and acting early instead of waiting to be told what comes next.
  3. You raise improvements on your own, to processes, tools, systems, teamwork, or product, even if it’s not part of your assigned responsibility.

Examples:

  1. Before a meeting, a team member prepares notes, drafts, and questions without being told the agenda.
  2. After completing a task, a developer immediately starts preparing integration steps for the next phase rather than waiting to be assigned.
  3. A marketer notices the onboarding email sequence is outdated and proposes a better flow, even though onboarding isn’t their department."

Alignment first

This value exists BEFORE execution. It is about agreeing on goals and expectations.

Behaviours:

  1. You clarify goals, priorities, and “what done looks like” before starting any task.
  2. You surface misunderstandings or unclear instructions immediately.
  3. You sync with the team throughout execution so work stays consistent, not drifting or duplicated.

Examples:

  1. An engineer asks the PM for a clear acceptance criteria before writing any code.
  2. A designer receives an unclear brief and immediately asks for clarity instead of guessing and producing the wrong thing.
  3. During a shared project, a team member verifies with another department halfway through to ensure both sides are still aligned on direction.
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