Le Wagon

The year is 2017, edging ever so close to the end of the year. The average human being is either preparing for quality time with the family or hatching a way to enter the new year less sober than the last time. A young sapling of a man faces an ever-pressing dilemma however, he is on his 3rd our of 4th year in his computer science course where he’s attempted but failed to secure a placement for his industrial year. Distraught and frustration were but a sample of the many emotions our young man was experiencing at this point in time, however back to his senses he realises he isn’t a fool and starts looking for solutions. He realises he cannot possibly hope to perform in his final year without any experience to lighten the load and so opts to take a year out to clear his head and possibly self-teach himself (oh how naive our protagonist was). Four months pass now and his discipline was as far down as antarctica. Re-assessing himself he realised all too late that his optimal form of learning was with others. At that moment the woman who gave him life rung him at the crack of thunder. Almost reluctantly he picked up the phone to hear something that would remain on his mind for the next week. “Instead of just sitting idly by why don’t you join this coding bootcamp I came across ? They’re rated as the best bootcamp for new coders in the world!”. The young man revolted at the thought of this suggestion; “Me ?” he thought, “A Computer Science student who’s done at least two years worth of studying?” His pride took a huge blow, he automatically assumed he would be a laughing stock if he took the suggestion seriously. Then as time passed he arrived at the painful truth that although he has studied the theory behind computers and algorithms he hadn’t actually done enough in terms of hands on experience, something that his industrial year was supposed to provide. Penultimately, after much deliberation our protagonist decided to grow some balls and apply for a spot in the Le Wagon london batch of January 2018. Ladies and Gentleman I am the young sapling of a man in this story. Pleased to meet your aquaintance.

So to begin the actual review ! As you can see from the short story directly above I was very wary and weirded out with applying and coming to the Le wagon bootcamp especially because I myself was a computer science student. I felt ashamed at myself for considering it because it meant that I didn’t have confidence in the skills I built up for my two years on the course. I soon came to the conclusion that there was no harm in doing it since I wasn’t being as productive as I could have been by myself.

Then came day 1, where we set up our computers with git. For windows(masterrace) users like me there was an additional setup of linux, which I was already familiar with but never actually followed through and started working with it. This was just to set things in motion however, the second day is when the camp truly began. After a morning lecture we would be given coding challenges based around what we were taught and just coded. At first I was a tad perplexed, mainly because it was more hands-on than I expected, I had never learnt via this method and so it took a good day to settle in to a daily routine. Through the first two weeks I felt that I was re-learning and also learning new things even from basic programming practice. I was quick on the uptake but actually taking my knowledge to create a solution from it was one of my biggest flaws I found early on in the course. To put it more simply I always came up with a long-winded and redundant method to solving an issue instead of looking for a straightforward and efficient method. Luckily the Teachers and TA’s issued by Le wagon have a special quality to them because they’re highly reliable in terms of both teaching and when I was stuck on an issue. Had I still trying to practice by myself I would have encountered problems that would have taken me at least an hour to fix; At Le Wagon it takes no more than 10 minutes as the winding path to a full stack developer opens up.

The events of the first day repeat itself for the next couple of weeks through essential topics like OOP, Schema design and SQL, Middleman, AJAX etc. Some days would have me feeling like it’s the end of the world but there was also a good chunk that left me with more anticipation than dread for the next day ( the same as others may attest to on their normal work day). The environment quickly became familiar to me as one of the better working and collaborative ones in my recent memory, and as such it nurtured some of the most creative and friendly people i’ve met into full fledged developers.

Although this is advertised as a coding bootcamp it is not 100% just that. With free hookups and talks with industry devs it offered far more than they actually put out. This included activities from yoga sessions to them taking care of the bar spend for the coursemates on a friday night. I have made some life-long friends and joined a fast growing network of developers through this course, something that I was not inclined to venture into at first. I would highly recommend Le Wagon to anyone looking to learn how to code with people at the same level, It wasn’t a walk in the park by any means but it is an excellent first step to anyone willing to put in the effort.

I have an engineering background and had limited experience coding, still, I wanted to make a drastic career change, that's where Le Wagon comes in. 

I thought it was important to share my experience since these reviews were a big part of how I chose Le Wagon and now I hope my review helps prospective students reach the same conclusion; Le Wagon graduates leave as empowered full-stack web developers. 

Once I had made up my mind on which bootcamp to attend I had to choose from one of their many locations all over the world. Of course, I chose Bali Indonesia because why wouldn't you want to choose to code in a beautiful place. The school is located in Canggu, a charming vacation spot with healthy food, excellent beaches, and affordable living (~$500/month for rent). You'll figure out that there's no better place to take on the rigors of a bootcamp than chill Bali. 

When I applied to the bootcamp the founder Dirk reached out to me, we scheduled a Skype call and he introduced me to the program. Once you're in Indonesia he helps you get the visa so that you can focus solely on coding. In addition to that, he sets up interesting talks on entrepreneur and coding topics throughout the bootcamp, organizes group activities, and provides information on places to stay and where to eat. 

There is some prep work to be done before the start of the course and unless you have ample experience coding I recommend doing it so that you're familiar with the basic concepts that come up in the beginning. 

I was happy to learn that students come from all backgrounds and coding skill levels, some had quit their jobs others were taking time off. 

The bootcamp goes from 9 am to around 6 or 7 pm with the lectures taking place till about noon and the rest of the day being spent on the assignments working alongside a buddy/partner which helps because if you miss something chances are your buddy knows it, but if not then you can open a help "ticket",  this is Le Wagon's way of handling student questions.  If you're stuck on something you open up a ticket right from the assignments website and soon an instructor or a teaching assistant comes to get you unstuck. 

After each day you'll be mentally drained but excited for what is being presented the next day, you see basic concepts, backend, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, API’s, etc, your knowledge begins to snowball and you start to believe that by the end you will actually be a full stack developer. 
In week six you put together what you have learned up point to work as a group (3 people) building an Airbnb clone. When that is completed you start working on the final project. One of the unique things about Le Wagon is that they foster entrepreneurship and in that spirit, they ask every student to do a basic pitch of ideas they would like to work on. Out of all the ideas presented a few are selected by student votes using a neat program that feels like American Idol. Those chosen ideas become final projects, everyone is assigned to a project based on their interests and the bootcamp culminates on demo day, a big event, part pitch, part party, part sendoff. 

After business and finance studies, I undertook my professional career in the financial industry in Europe. Two years ago, I got a Canadian work permit and decided to move to Montreal. I've always been interested in entrepreneurship and tech industry, so I decided to work in a start-up as a business developer. When I arrived in Montreal, the first batch of Le wagon Montreal was running and I went to the Demo Day (I already heard of le Wagon in Paris as some of my friends did it in the past). I was really impressed by the quality of students' applications, and it really made me want to do this coding bootcamp. 

A few months after, I took the plunge and was part of Batch #125. These 9 weeks were really challenging as I had no experience in Web Development, but it was an incredible experience. Some days are really hard, but you need to carry on and not throw in the towel. 

There are some ingredients that make this bootcamp very unique. First of all, the teachers are amazing, they help and support you a lot, you can feel they really enjoy sharing their knowledge and skills. Moreover, the pedagogy created by Sebastien Saunier and Boris Paillard is impressive. Then, your student buddies, you make very good friends in a short period of time as you all live the same intensive experience and everyone is supporting each other. The cherry on the cake is the last two weeks of projects, where you build a real product from scratch as a team. It's very challenging, intensive and amazing. All the things you've learned from the past weeks became suddenly clear.

I highly recommend le Wagon. It brings you great technical skills that will lead you to a dev, product owner or entrepreneur career, but it's also a wonderful human adventure.

After graduated from a sports makerting Business School, I wanted to add something to my studies and be more reliable on labour market.
Le Wagon was the perfect fit, intense experience, with great people with differents backgrounds, but all focused on learning how to code.

We had 6 weeks of learning the basics of coding, then a one week project in order to build a AirBnB like website.
The two last weeks were the most intense : with two other students, we had to build our own project, from zero to online, a tinder like app to help you find your tennis partner, depending on your search criteria (level, gender, search radius, ...). If both players accept they can fix a match/training.
This was the best way to combinate all what we learn from the very begining, patient and passionate teachers were always there to keep an eye when we had issues.  

I recommend this bootcamp for anyone who would like to change their career or improve their knowledge. Thanks Le Wagon Bordeaux :)

Pros: 

-Walking out of bootcamp with 2 different web apps!! 

-Full Ocean View Every Day

-Surf Before Class

-6 after-hours workshops on Security, technical interviews, how to run kickstarter campaigns

-Great, knowlegable staff

-Yin yoga at the end of the week for mental health

-Discounts at MANY local restaurants for being a le wagon student

Cons:
-8 weeks rather than traditional 9 of other locations due to visa restrictions

-constantly staring at the surf outside the classroom everyday.....FOMO much? (Okay...not really a con though...)

My story starts out different than most. I came to Le Wagon as a Microbiologist working in the pharmaceutical industry. I was really disillusioned and disengaged from that job; the day-to-day now would be the same day-to-day 10 years from now because there was no prospect of career progression unless people retire. I’m an incredibly creative person, so I need to be building things everyday and solving problems regularly to be fulfilled. It’s here that I found Le Wagon and left my job to undertake the 9 week bootcamp.

Fast forward 9 weeks later, I’ve completed the first Le Wagon bootcamp (batch #135) in Melbourne and am now a fully certified Full Stack Developer. I can’t even begin to describe how amazing the experience has been. It’s completely turned my life around both personally and professionally. Not only do you learn how to program, but you learn all the fundamentals of web development, software architecture, database development and migration management, the real world application of Ruby in both a front and a back end context, the paradigms of MVC and CRUD, and key entrepreneurial strategies. The best part of it all though is that you, with a team of your peers, design and build a fully functional web application in just 10 days. Your teachers are so supportive and create such a positive environment, that I felt like I could completely push myself out of my comfort zone. Everyone there, including your peers, builds you up and you’re all working towards the same common goal as a team.

Your experience with Le Wagon doesn’t end with the bootcamp - you become part of a growing community. I was given a lot of support with building my resume for the tech industry after my career change, and there’s always someone to go to for programming advice if you get stuck on a problem. I’ve now found work as a Full Stack Developer. I’m incredibly passionate about what I do and I’m thankful to be able to get up every morning to build something beautiful.

Le Wagon has been a life changing experience for me.

I got first introduced with Le Wagon in Brussels in late 2015. A year later I tried to learn myself how to code. I completed some online courses on HTML, CSS and Python without really doing any projects. I made little progress and my learning curve was very flat. As I only stayed on the surface of things I didn't really see the point of me contuining to learn how to code. Boy was I wrong! 

It was not until the summer of 2017 that I decided to emerge myself fully into coding. To do this I knew I needed to enroll in a bootcamp. Now, how do you choose your bootcamp? A couple of things were important to me. This bootcamp:

• would be present in Europe and preferably in the most beautiful European Capitals.
• would cost less than €10.000.
• would include an international network of alumni.
• would teach me more than one programming language and let me work on at least one project in depth.

Le Wagon met all of the above criteria. I ultimately choose for Berlin because of it's startup vibe, cultural history and level of professionalism of the resident Le Wagon team.

So far Le Wagon bootcamp has been the most immersive coding workout I ever encountered. Le Wagon offers a tightly-knit 9-week coding schedule backed by extremely talented Teaching Assistants, a handy online 'knowledge' platform with exercises and an innovative startup vibe.

In only 9 weeks I learned how to master HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript ES2015, SQL, git, GitHub, Heroku and Ruby on Rails. In the last two weeks teams were formed to develop on our own Rails applications. Together with my team I brainstormed, designed and developed a full-fledged task management platform for Handy Men called Handy Harry. On the last day of the bootcamp you get a taste of the real startup world when you get to showcase your application on stage in front of Berlin's tech scene, friends and family.

Best learning experience so far!

Thank you

My interest about coding started when I was on marketing position that required creating a lot of automated campaigns set up API connections between all the services I was using. However, not having the technical knowledge to do that, each task was always a struggle to be accomplished, especially when I needed to rely on other developers to dedicate the time on their busy schedule to help me out.

I started by taking some online courses to see if it was something I could envision myself doing, and it soon made me realize that: yes, I liked and enjoyed coding; and I'd need a more structured course and environment. Then, I started my quest to find the best coding bootcamp, the one that would put me on a fast track to reach my goal of learning code and be able to actually work with it.

On my search, I came across a handful of courses. I started looking to the curriculum and the overall aspects of the program, such as the network, in-class assistance and job assistance after the bootcamp. Le Wagon really beat up any other I found. The curriculum and technologies learned where relevant and up-to-date (vouched by friend developers) and the reviews and feedback I received from alumni I reached out to were 10s across the board.

The one thing I was a bit hesitant still was the job search after the bootcamp, as some other schools had big and temptatious promises to get you a job right after completion, but looking at all the other aspects they were not as strong. At this point, I had to make a decision: take on the challenge and go with the strongest bootcamp or stay in the status quo and hope for a promise to come through.

So I decided to go with Le Wagon and really invest myself in it to get the best out of this experience.

From day one we started coding and work on challenges, and every day after that seemed like were twice as much as the previous day. The learning curve is crazy steep and fast. The amazing teaching team is a great reason of why the whole batch could achieve it, they were always supportive and didn't hesitate to sit with you for all the time needed to solve any question or make the knowledge acquired even more solid.

Fast forward to the final weeks of the bootcamp, the projects weeks are the most awesome time you will have during the whole course. That's when you realize the how strong is the power of building things from scratch and working with amazing fellows developers on it - and before starting Le Wagon we'd wouldn't be able to do any of that. This is the greatest time to put all the things learned during the bootcamp in practice, and solve bugs of course. :)

Now back to my main goal, switch career paths and find a tech job after the bootcamp.

In retrospective, I made the best choice when I decided to go with the course that offered me the strongest curriculum, network and overall experience. I was able to get interview and land on a job that I really wanted within less than a month searching. I owe that mostly to the strong development basis I built during the whole experience at Le Wagon, even the final projects served as a great portfolio to recruiters when I was asked about things I had built previously.

Overall my experiece at Le Wagon was amazing, I'd do it again and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in becoming a developer or just get more into the tech side of any industry.

Having suffered in math all throughout school and coming from a strictly liberal arts background, I was afraid programming would be too hard for my analytical brain to truly grasp in 9 weeks. Yet, the interest in the subject was big enough that I decided to pursue Le Wagon anyways. My experience during those 9 weeks shocked me. The long hours quickly translated into the steepest learning curve of my life to date. And although I didn't go in with the intention of becoming a developer afterwards, the passion transmitted by the teachers everyday, the holistic curriculum, and the supportive LW community have left in me curiosity about the programming world that I cannot shake off. I would recommend Le Wagon to anyone, from any background, with any interest or previous any skill-set. Understanding how the internet and the tech world works is an asset that cannot be dismissed in the 21st century and layering code on top of people's knowledge is one of the most powerful tools we have to positively impact the world. So if that's what you want to do, then I'd say jump on the Wagon!

I never really had the courage to actually get behind a computer and start learning to code all by myself. I thought that would be super complicated and I wouldn't be able to comprehend anything. I started to search for schools that teach me all of this in the best way possible.

The best approach for me to learn something is "learning by doing", so I searched for something doing just that. A boot camp would've been ideal and so my journey started. I decided to take part in the 9-week coding Bootcamp of Le Wagon.

I must say, at this point, it was the best decision I could've made.

Just right from the first day, everybody was very friendly. First thing in the morning was a lecture giving us students the knowledge we needed for the day. Most of the day we spent with coding together with another student (always someone else). During this time you had very friendly and capable teachers by your side and no matter the problem, they took their time to explain it, giving the optimal support to learn something completely new. In the evening all students came together again and started the live code. In it, we all worked together on an exercise. This created a very nice and comfortable atmosphere.

During the last two weeks, we worked on projects. The projects themselves are created from scratch and based on everything taught during the boot camp. Le Wagon provided us with the skills and the mindset shaping us into real web developers and with this knowledge we created some really amazing things.

Le Wagon is undoubtedly an unforgettable experience and it also brings people from all over the world together.

My story

Before joining Le Wagon coding bootcamp I was running an AdWords-agency for 5 years. Here, I shipped more than 200 landing pages on builders like PageWiz & Unbounce as well as on Wordpress to clients. So I was familiar with the tech and startup world but I just could not learn to code. I tried Codecademy and Udemy but did not follow through with the tutorials.

How I learned about coding bootcamps

The idea of attending a coding bootcamp had been in my mind since 2013, when I graduated from university and started the AdWords business. I briefly read about a coding bootcamp in my home city of Cologne, Germany. Yet I did not have the time and money to join then, and also later I never heard of this camp again. However, the idea remained on my bucket list. When I moved to Berlin in spring 2017 to participate in an accelerator program, I realized that lack of of tech knowledge in our team and thus a non-tech, non-scaling product was one of the reasons we got no follow up-investment. So I decided to change that and attend a coding bootcamp late 2017.

Why I chose Le Wagon coding bootcamp Berlin

At the time there were three coding bootcamps available in Berlin. I called them all. Only Le Wagon answered. I even emailed the other two, which I would not do normally, as I prefer direct contact and nevertheless: Nothing.

Philipp, the Driver at Le Wagon Berlin however was spot on. I called him up and we arranged for a walk in the same day. I spoke with him but also with the students from the current batch and actually, I was already sold at this point. The atmosphere was just right. Concentrated and hard working, yet relaxed and laid back at the same time. Also it was more appealing to me that Le Wagon focused on future founders as much as on future developers as my goal was to get the knowledge for my next project rather then get a junior dev position. So if you favor building a real product with a real team in 2 weeks rather than exercising for job interview questions - this is the place to be. However, alumni who want to get a dev job also get it. The mix is roughly one third founders, one third hired as developer and one third going in to a product management or consulting role. So it's up to you to chose.

Experience at the Bootcamp

Le Wagon is the future of learning. It combines lectures which are actually your teacher coding live, rather than reading slides, peer programming with your buddy through the day and the best e-learning platform I have ever seen. You can literally follow the Wagon examples step-by-step and it will work. The way knowledge is taught at Le Wagon is just modern and how it should be. The complete opposite of our education system in schools and universities mostly stuck in and producing for the early industrial society of the 19th century.  You can always ask a teacher to explain the problem and help you 1:1 when you get stuck. Stuff you would pay significant amounts for at places like Codementor. At the end of the day, the camp helped me to get over the initial threshold and start to code in Ruby, JS, SQL, HTML, CSS and then combine everything in Rails. At the end I built an Airbnb clone in one week and an MVP of a Job search site in two weeks with my team.

Skills I gained

Remember the scene from the Matrix when Neo wakes up and realises: "I know kung fu". Exactly that happened. I was able to go onto the developer and API sections of SaaS sites and understand what it is all about. I could finally consume the internet through the command line. Scraping data, using APIs to enrich it and outputting to the desired format. This was the magic I was doing. And I finally started my project: Automating online marketing A to Z from client onboarding, copy generation, landing page and ad creation for Google & Facebook. I built the first MVP of LeadConcierge in just three weeks. So I got everything and more which I could wish for.

The community

Actually, the biggest thing you get at Le Wagon is to connect with likeminded people. This is where the bootcamp overdelivers. Again, the staff at Le Wagon does a great job of connecting everybody in the group and forming friendships. Starting with a dinner for everyone on the first day and continuing until the demo day party on graduation. What’s more? In Berlin, free coworking is offered to alumni, so we can stay connected to the community and the following batches after the program while connecting to the over 3.000 alumni on a private slack platform. Here, tech advice, jobs etc. are plenty. Fun fact: While traveling in Silicon Valley I met a fellow alumnus from Brazil. So this is really a world wide community.

Wrap-up

Come for the tools. Stay for the network. If you read till this point you should imagine by now, that I loved my experience during and after Le Wagon in Berlin. I got all the skills I expected and friendships I really care about. I would recommend the camp to anyone willing to learn. It transformed the way I think and enabled me to finally build a scalable product. You want to know what I mean? If your only tool is a hammer, you treat every problem as a nail. Yet now I have a lot of different tools in my arsenal enabling me to think like an engineer and tackle problems with automation in a scaling way. And you will have too. Take my advice: Check out the Wagon events in your city or on Youtube and once you're ready embark on this journey!

LE WAGON advertises with the slogan “Change your life, learn to code”. For me this became absolutely true. The important thing to mention: Coding did not, but Le Wagon did! Here are 4 reasons why:

1. The teachers

They are specialists in their field, travel the world to teach and even speak at conferences. On top of that, they are graded at the end of every batch, so it’s kind of a natural selection and only the best of the best survive.

2. The Buddy-System

Every day, after having been taught the new content, you get a new buddy from the other classmates. This is a genius move, not just because you get to know all the class members very well (helps a lot for the final projects), but especially because it pushes the engagement of the entire class. No one wants to be the “loser that nobody wants to work with”. So as soon as you feel that you are behind, you put in even extra hours in the morning or the evening or the weekend. You can imagine what happens when everybody is doing that! Yes, it pushes performance to new heights!

3. The atmosphere

You have team events, you have Friday beers (and free beer all the time) and through the buddy system new best friends for life guaranteed. We were 18 people from 10 different nationalities. The mix of cultures and backgrounds makes Le Wagon exceptional!

4. The Alumni Network

I doubt that there is a course with a better network. To date, more than 20 locations worldwide. Thousands of alumni that all went through the “hell of Le Wagon” and that are crazily responsive for whatever you need help with. Le Wagon has Slack channels for jobs, events, growth-hacking tools … Whatever you need, the community will help you!