Le Wagon

Without going into my life story too much I recently quit my job working at a social media startup after feeling fed up with customer complaints day in day out and knowing I was capable of a lot more.

I had started to take an interest in coding since I was already capable of designing websites and I wanted to take it to the next level. For me, it was all about self-achievement I just wasn't getting enough satisfaction designing website anymore.

During my downtime from work, I tried to teach myself how to code but lacked the focus and was too easily distracted and didn't find myself making much progress. So started looking for classes/bootcamps on how to code. I found Le Wagon which had glowing 5 starts reviews (which made me a bit sceptical at first) and after researching them a bit more I decided to pull the trigger and go for it.

I'm still young but honestly, I have never made a better decision in my life. I learnt more in my 9 weeks at Le Wagon then I ever did in an entire year of college. No matter your age or background if you are even slightly considering doing it then seriously just take the plunge, you will look back at it in the future as a defining point in your life.

Having completed the latest batch at Le Wagon London, I can honestly say this has been the most incredible, life changing experience I've had. 

Before Le Wagon, I worked as a builder. At the end of Le Wagon I was a junior developer. It may sound simplistic but that's the case for everyone who completes this course. They give you the solid foundations, understanding and skills to perform as a competent junior developer and get a job in the real world. 

The course is not easy though and you definitely get out of it what you put in to it. If you're not commited, you'll drown. It's a demanding and intense course that takes up 45 full days of your brain power and stamina. Having said this though, it's also brilliantly fun and engaging. Ed Ward and the team at Le Wagon London make the whole experience worth getting up in the morning for. Every week there's an interesting event hosted either at the course offices or at Google Campus. They put on drinks every friday for the alumni and it this stuff that set's it apart from the other courses. 

In terms of job help, they provide several talks from industry leaders and past alumni to help you understand how to get your first job if this is your aim after the course. There is no need to spend a further 3 weeks and £2,5k getting this element like the other courses in the London area. You will get a job after the course and you'll have the demonstratable skills to prove to employers that you're worth employing. 

I would say that, if you are looking for the best course for your money that will give you the skills and understanding to get a job as a junior developer, then you've already found it.  

I originally studied Business, and worked in Marketing for a while until I realized it wasn't a good career fit for me. When I figured out that the tasks I enjoyed the most from my previous job involved writing some basic HTML/CSS/JavaScript, I decide to develop on those skills and joined Batch#125 of Le Wagon's bootcamp in Montreal. Like a few of the previous reviewers have mentioned, I was initially skeptical of the glowing reviews about Le Wagon's program. But after going through the bootcamp, I can definitely say that those reviews are more than 100% justified!

What attracted me to Le Wagon's program was how well structured the course content was: starting from with the fundamentals of programming, to object-oriented programming, to databases, to front-end and finally the group projects for the last 3 weeks. The last 3 weeks was especially fun because everything we learned in the previous weeks began to click, which provided the confidence for the groups in our batch to create some great-looking webapps in our final demoday!

The buddy system that every Le Wagon student goes through for the daily challenges was a GREAT way to learn programming, and I felt this was one of the strongest parts of the bootcamp's design. In my experience, this ended up being mutually beneficial for myself and whoever my partner was for the day.  If I felt that I was struggling with a challenge I could always ask my partner for tips and advice, and if my partner needed assistance I could help them out and explain concepts to see if I really understood them. Furthermore, I found it incredibly useful practice to work with different people when it comes to solving coding problems.

In addition, the teachers and TAs were super helpful with their advice and patient with their time. What I appreciated the most was that they TRULY understood that everyone in the batch had different learning curves/speeds. So regardless if you were doing well or struggling with the coding challenges, you never really felt alone or left behind. Le Wagon also has a TON of additional resources and guides which students can access during (and even after) the 9-week bootcamp!

Since the Le Wagon ended I've found myself building webapps for fun, and even managed to land several job interviews from interesting companies. I salute Le Wagon for providing me with a wonderful learning experience, as well as enabling my confidence to pursue a career in Web Development.

So if you're looking for an immersive, valuable program to learn web development, Le Wagon is going to be your best bet!

Mid-2017, after 7+ years working as a consultant in the banking sector, I felt like I needed a fresh new start. Tired of endless meetings and committees, looking for agility and dynamism, I also took the decision to start working on my own projects. For that, I needed a new set of skills: coding!

A friend of mine – now a freelance developer - had undertaken Le Wagon bootcamp in Paris 1 year before that and convinced me to do the same. So I joined the London batch mid-January 2018 for two months… and it was insanely great! Best experience ever, from my point of view. It was like going back to school but this time I loved it!

But you have to be committed, I mean really committed! Learning something new 9h hours a day is not easy, especially when you left school 10 years ago like me (I am 33). But it is so cool solving puzzles all day long with people that eventually become your friends!
In Le Wagon, I met incredibly rich and different profiles: an Olympic swimmer, a former consultant, a ski instructor, an investment banker, a chocolate producer, a teacher, an electrician… And that’s what makes the beauty of it! Here, everyone is different but we are all doing the same thing. And that variety comes really handy when the time arrives you have to be creative, especially the last two weeks when you have to build your own app from scratch.

Every day starts with a 1h30 lesson on a specific topic. Then you are paired with a buddy and you have to go through as many exercises as you can together, leave no man behind! 
It is actually a great system since explaining or being explained something is always useful for both parts. And if you get stuck, you can raise a ticket and one of the teachers will come to help you within minutes.

The two last weeks are dedicated to building your own project with a team or joining a team with a project. By group of 3 to 4 people, you build your app from scratch until the final demo day during which you present what you built in front of 100 people at Google Campus. Both scary and awesome!
If you want to have a look at what my team and I achieved during those two last weeks, go to www.journease.online, a one stop shop for your journeys.

As a conclusion, I absolutely loved those 2 months in Le Wagon. I wanted to learn the basis of coding and I did, more than that actually. I wanted to meet people (I am new in London) and I actually made some very good friends. I wanted to build something, my team and I built an app I am really proud of. I wanted to have fun and I most certainly did :slightly_smiling_face:
Le Wagon is not the cheapest coding bootcamp (nor the most expensive either actually) but it is definitely worth it from my point of view. Their promise is “change your life, learn to code” it is more than fuffilled.

Why Le Wagon?
        
  I've always been interested by computer sciences. I decided, a few months ago to apply at Le Wagon Bordeaux... And it was one of the best human and educational mission I have experienced so far.

    This training has been structured in such a way, it gives a maximum of technical knowledge in a minimal amount of time. It has lots of advises, in order to give us a great autonomy in order to be efficient after the ned of the Bootcamp. The community worldwide approach is just perfect. That's mainly why I recommend Le Wagon.

    In order to help you to understand what we are able to achieve after the nine weeks, I will explain more about the final project, which has been elaborated by Joseph Binyoum Bayemi and myself during the last two weeks in the Wagon.
Our project named Bookmate is a web application. It connects (using a messenger) readers through literary taste and allows them to communicate. https://www.bookmate.club (if you are curious). Say it sounds simple but believe me, seven weeks ago we would have been unable to do it.

If my experience could help some to make choices, I can only recommend that you go on (https://www.lewagon.com) to register, for the undecided I invite you to go read other feedback. See you soon  

I was a third year Business Cinematic Arts student with no idea of where I wanted to proceed. Though I have had ideas in the past, I lacked the hard skills to bring them to life. Frustrated, I took this semester off, eager to explore the topics I been intrigued by. As I researched different bootcamps, I was drawn to Le Wagon’s approach of bringing coding skills to creative people. Little did I know, my decision to join Le Wagon would also jumpstart my understanding and career in UX Design, Web Development and Product Management.

The first three weeks were tough but the Teaching Assistants were always around to answer questions and explain a concept again. While I was managing to complete the challenges, I did not take full advantage of what Le Wagon had to offer. I would leave before Live Code and spent little time with my batch. It wasn’t until the forth week that I was partnered with a buddy who insisted I stayed for Live Code and drinks. I stayed and my experience at Le Wagon changed for the absolute better. I got to know the Teaching Assistants on a more personable level, making it easier to ask questions during lecture and inquiring how to move forward from the bootcamp. I became more engaged as my buddy of the day would be a fellow coder and a friend. We would spend the day debating the best method to solve the coding challenge and joking around in between. I became eager to stay after I completed the challenges and even Live Code-d in front of my whole batch. If you allow it, this experience will not be a lonely nor purely academic one. Le Wagon is a warm space for learning wholeheartedly, asking a ton of questions, making friends, creating business partnerships, and coming up with ideas.

The final three weeks at Le Wagon were my favorite - Project Weeks. This is when I was introduced to UX Design and Product Management. We started with Figma, an interface design tool, to map out what we wanted the web-app to look like. We spent the day brainstorming the user journey and dreaming about the website’s features. At the end of the day, we showcased our initial designs. The projects you will build with your team mates are a testament to how well Le Wagon prepares you. My team ended most days surprised and impressed with the work we have done. The workspace turns into a mini hub of start-ups. Each group vigorously coding away, enthusiastically brainstorming and collaboratively working. I was exhilarated from the energy I felt each day.

The results? By the 6th week at Le Wagon, I secured a job as a UX Designer and Front End Web Developer at a Tech Start Up I am truly passionate about. Le Wagon gave me the coding skills I needed to be in the creative spaces I never dared to dream about. I am now able to have a career that is an amalgamation of my creative and analytical side. 

I have just graduated from Le Wagon, an intensive 9 weeks coding bootcamp. It was my first time programming and I absolutely loved it. These are my key take-aways from it.

Three Broken clichés:

• Coding is lonely:

Before joining Le Wagon, I had the image of coders as lonely, weird people who spent their days in front of screens, by themselves in a dark garage, eating cereal. In fact, what I discovered at Le Wagon is that coding actually requires a lot of collaboration. I think all the students from my batch will remember the day we started a group project on GitHub. In 90% of the cases, you will code with others, and being able to communicate efficiently is one of the key skills of a good programmer.

• Coding is boring:

Once again, let’s return to the coder-caveman cliché. From an external point of view, he seems to constantly do the same thing, with the same bored expression. That’s a lie. When I was coding, I experienced rollercoaster moods that led to this kind of train of thought: 1. Getting stuck on something: “I hate coding, Ruby is wrong, my code is obviously perfect, anyway I despise it so it doesn’t matter” 2. Finding the solution: “Coding is amazing, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, I’m the best, Ruby is the best, everyone is the best.” Until I got stuck again. Coding is challenging, tiring, frustrating but definitely not boring.

• Coding is for boys:

The coder-caveman cliché from the movies is useful once again. Sadly, there are not a lot of coder-cavewomen on screens, which is a shame. There is a need for more developers in every industry, and a simple way to fix this is to encourage the other half of humankind to learn coding. We were ten women in our batch and we did just as well as the other 30 men. When it comes to coding, everyone is equal which is why more women should learn to code — and more tech companies should hire them.

A travel Chatbot:

During the last two weeks, we worked in teams to bring an idea to life. Celia, Hen, Ben and I created Voyagr, a Chatbot and associated web app which asks a series of questions to provide a user with personalized travel inspiration. Building a product in two weeks was very challenging but very interesting. The hardest part was prioritizing and making sure that we were focusing on the right tasks every day. In the end, we obtained good results and we have had almost 100 unique users since we launched it two weeks ago (check it out: voyagr.co.uk).

Three amazing teammates and many more friends:

There is nothing better than struggling on the same challenges during nine weeks to form friendships. I have met amazing people during these two months, from the students to the teachers. Le Wagon manages to bring together a very large variety of people in the same place, from those who have 20 years of work experience to freshly graduated high school students. This combination is a large part of what makes the bootcamp such an enriching experience. I personally became friends with an Olympic swimmer from Hong Kong, an experienced consultant, a Canadian former school teacher, a VC fund owner… and many more.

Coding and Product management skills:

You learn a lot in nine weeks and there is no time to rest. I felt more braindead during the bootcamp than I had ever felt during the course of my Bachelor or Master degrees. It’s difficult but completely worth it!

I have worked in Business Intelligence for 6 years and became interested in product management as a career change, however I felt that I lacked in-depth tech knowledge in order to be able to hit the ground running in that role. I then searched for bootcamps in London and Le Wagon really stood out in terms of their positive reviews online and offline.

The course is structured really well and it is certainly challenging, no day is the same and you surprise yourself at the end how far you’ve come after not being able to properly write a line of code at the start of the course. The day begins with a lecture and followed by coding challenges that you need to complete with your buddy as you get paired up with a different student from the course every day. This is not only a great way of meeting everyone in the class but also means that sometimes you learn from your buddy and sometimes you get to teach and therefore give yourself the opportunity to improve and solidify the knowledge. Most importantly, throughout the day there are always teaching assistants to hand that are able to answer your every question and make sure that you have grasped all the concepts properly.

After the course ends, Le Wagon provides a support network of talented alumni that share jobs, advice and tips which is really invaluable. Le Wagon is not just a bootcamp, it’s a community that inspires, teaches and supports. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this experience to anyone.

I studied event management at university but soon realised it wasn’t for me. After a few gap years of travelling, a friend invited me to a coding 101 workshop and I came out of it curious to learn more. Initially I tried to do some self teaching online but I found it a bit slow and difficult not having immediate help. That’s when I started looking at coding bootcamps - I was excited by the idea that you would be job ready by the end of the 9 weeks. After thorough research and reading so many reviews, I couldn’t believe I found a bootcamp that was so loved that it had 400+ reviews and 5 stars!

It all happened so quickly - within two weeks I enrolled, did the prep work, started Le Wagon, and suddenly pursuing a new career change. Before starting, I was terrified about having no prior coding knowledge and being behind but soon found that everyone was in the same boat and all you needed was an eagerness to learn. The teachers and teaching assistants have such a welcoming approach, they really make sure you understand every concept and reasoning. Each and every day of the 9 weeks was insane, intense, but the best kind - I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to get up at 7am. The structure of the program is perfectly designed, everything you learn in first 7 weeks is put in practice for your final project in the last two weeks. It’s so rewarding seeing this end product that you and your team have created in just 10 days.

Coming straight out of Le Wagon, I was offered a front-end freelance job at a startup. A week later, I received two full-time Ruby developer job offers and have accepted one at a digital development agency. Hands down, applying at Le Wagon has been the best decision I’ve ever made. For the first time in my life, I’m excited about my career.

After graduating in management, I started my own business. After 3 years, I faced few challenges that gave me a hard time. I had to stop my activity. The conclusion: I lost a lot of money and time.

In hindsight, this experience has made me stronger. As J-K Rowling said, “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” 

I decided to have my first digital experience by launching a social platform dedicated to sports. It is by working on this project, hand in hand with a web agency, that coding has aroused my interest.

Coding has become a passion, and this is certainly the direction I wanted to take for my career. I dropped my platform to be entirely dedicated to coding. New career, new life, time for me to take off!

After a few months of learning by myself, I was looking for a way to learn faster. While searching the Internet, I discovered Le Wagon Coding Bootcamp, "Change your life, learn to code in 9 weeks", perfect that was exactly what I was looking for!

I've applied, got an interview with Antoine, the co-founder, got accepted into the program for January session. The adventure could start!

I flew to Montreal in January (it was cold, but the snow is cool!). We met together on Sunday before the first day for a kick-off drink. I met my new classmates, few teachers, and MG.

This drink was really a good idea and made me very comfortable.

The bootcamp was very intense, we learned a new concept every day until the final project, which was an amazing experience! Each team worked hard to be ready for the demo day (https://www.lewagon.com/demoday/125).

It was not just hard work, we had a lot of fun too! We participated in events organized by Le Wagon but also by ourselves.

Thanks to Le Wagon, I am today a Full-Stack developer, and I have already few project opportunities I'm working on.

Oh, and now I know a lot of great people!

I graduated university in 2014 and headed home to work in the telecommunications industry. I have always been passionate about startups and developing business ideas, which is why I chose to get my BBA in Entrepreneurial Management.
However, home was not the best place to put my newly acquired knowledge to use as an employee or as a founder. The startup scene is practically inexistent and skilled labor in tech is hard to get by. So, my only chance was to learn how to do build these ideas myself. 
I started to learn on my own, but it got kind of overwhelming. Even though I did acquire some knowledge, I decided to take a break and came to Barcelona in order to get my master in Project Management. Slowly, it felt as if I was getting closer to my goal.

It wasn’t, however, until I decided to join Le Wagon that I felt a huge progress in my carefully planned path. Even though it was only two months, I have never felt such great power like I do today thanks to this boot camp. Now, I feel like there is no limit to what I can do. At Le Wagon I figured that there was so much to learn that now I have embraced the fact that my whole life is going to involve continuously learning new things. And that is one of the most important things you get from learning to code at Le Wagon, you learn to appreciate learning so much that it becomes a stimulating hobby for you. You get a lot of theory but everyday you learn to master it by putting it to practice. At the end of the bootcamp you end up having developed several applications. 
Today, after two weeks of having finished the bootcamp, I keep coding my own new projects and learning new things everyday.  This wouldn’t be the same if I hadn’t gone through LW. I have found a passion, but not everybody comes to become a programmer, some people had their own goals and ideas of what to do with this knowledge, and they all left with their expectations greatly surpassed.

The people are amazing. Your peers are like minded, but still a very diverse group of people that unite under one same goal. This journey makes you bond together very tightly. The staff, who I am also lucky to call my friends today, are incredible people and teachers, they know very well what they’re doing. Lastly, the program is incredibly well structured and the resources are top quality.
I can only say amazing things about this place, if I could I would do it all over again.

For all those who are technology enthusiasts, here you will find a family! I would like to write this review to tell you a bit about how Le Wagon has transformed my life. I am a 33-year-old entrepreneur woman, who has the privilege of working from anywhere in the world as a business intelligence consultant for e-commerces. But I first graduated in History in 2007 and when I was in college, we were at the height of Fotolog and I remember doing one, for the arts discipline because many students didn’t have enough money to buy the books and so they used a black and white xerox paper to follow the content. Despite being a technology enthusiast, I confess I never imagined myself working in the area. After graduating I went to work in an institute maintained by a holding company and soon I was inserted in the universe of the marketing. Since then, there have been two more university courses, a specialization in digital marketing and a project management course, both i thought would allow me to act safely as a marketing manager - but I was wrong! Three years ago I founded a company in a small city in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil to provide digital advice for new businesses, meeting a great demand of Brazilian businessmen in search of growth and expansion in their sales. During these three years, several technological changes have come directly to the success and competitiveness of my clients and more and more data science has become present. The work became difficult at the same time that new startups emerged with fluid and interactive business models and it was necessary to seek innovation and more knowledge and that is how I found the proposal of Le Wagon bootcamp.

For someone who had never written a line of code at all, the first few weeks were intense and very difficult. I immersed myself in a totally unknown universe, and when I got to the middle of the program when we entered the Frontend grid, all things connected and a universe of possibilities opened up. The classes are fantastic, the exercises are done in rotating doubles, which lets you get to know all the people and what incredible people I've met! You feel at home, you have the full support of your teachers and classmates and you are not afraid to make a mistake. I connected with people who worked at Deloitte, Microsoft, Fintechs and a number of cool companies, met with liberal professionals and entrepreneurs and one of the students got a financing before the course ended to develop his demoday project. In addition, Le Wagon always performs meetups after the classes that new interesting people shows up (and have beer at the end!). It’s a laid-back environment where you can do a great networking. Another cool thing was access to an exclusive community in slack with people and companies from all over the world, where there are always interesting position offers and invitations for projects. When I finished the course I decided to send my resume and I was invited to 17 different interviews in a single month and one of them I met a former student from Le Wagon. But what surprised me the most was the quality of the curricular grade. 

I could not even believe how much I learned in such a short time. It was not "just another course", I really left feeling very capable of creating an innovative digital expansion project for my clients. After three months from the end of the bootcamp, I'm being able to implement significant changes and reaping the fruits of a 30% growth in my projects. I was able to perform integrations with APIs and ERPs and design a dashboard with data processing, that grows and modernizes every day, to function as an intelligence support for marketing staff, which also led to an economy with external and closed tools. My demand for projects has increased considerably, as has consulting.I'm building together with a community of women programmers an academy of algorithm studies that unites three Brazilian states. I'm sure this is just the beginning of a new level in my career and the choice to make Le Wagon bootcamp was key to that. I recommend Le Wagon bootcamp for every manager and entrepreneur, even if not in the technology area. If you love technology, and you know what it can do for you and your company, go ahead! I'm sure you will love the experience!