Le Wagon

Coming from the creative industry working as a freelance fashion photographer for the last 7 years, I was pretty worried about my ability to learn something as ‘technical’ and ‘right-brain’ as coding.

But, the super well thought out structure of Le Wagon coding bootcamp meant that I was able to learn far more than I ever imagined. The program is fast paced but thorough enough to get the core concepts hammered in and have you ready and confident to take on projects by the end.

As I was coming from a zero-tech background I made sure to complete all the pre-course work which I would highly recommend if you want to maximise your capacity to absorb knowledge during the course. Regardless of your abilities, everyone is nurtured and catered for by the wonderful teachers and assistants but the more you can prepare before starting, the more material you will be able to cover during the lessons and therefore the further along you will be by the time you finish.

For anyone considering the leap from a creative or otherwise less ‘techy’ field or anyone in general who wants to skill-up as fast as possible in Web Development, Le Wagon is your ticket. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this fantastic programme especially in the blissful location of Bali with Dirk and his fabulous team.

When I applied for Le Wagon Montréal I wasn’t sure what to expect.   I decided to do it because I wanted to learn how to code to become a good project manager and be able to speak the same language as developers. Coming from a web marketing background the only thing I knew about code was basic HTML and CSS.  I really wanted to know more about how things really work on a website but the number of information online can be really intimidating when you’re on your own.   That’s when I heard about Le Wagon Montréal. The program seemed to fit perfectly my needs with a nine weeks intensive program where you learn how to code a complete web application, so I applied.   As the bootcamp approached, I was a bit afraid. I've heard a lot of good things about it, but pretty much all the people said that it was hard and really intense. I wasn’t sure about my capacity to do it and if I would enjoy coding as much as I wanted to.   Now that I finished it, I won’t lie, it is intense. You don’t learn how to code a web app in nine weeks if it’s not. But even though it’s hard on paper, everything is done in order to make it as simple as possible for you. So you work hard, but you enjoy every moment of it!   Every day is so much rewarding, you learn something new and you practice immediately, being helped by amazing teachers but also by the other students. You really learn a lot about yourself during those nine weeks seeing that your brain can work on problems like you didn’t expect.  Coding can get really addictive, and the way it’s done at Le Wagon Montréal has a lot to do with it!   In the end, le wagon gives you the ability to build pretty much any web app you can think of and it’s really amazing to see what people can achieve during the final project knowing that no one knew how to code two months before.   All in all, it was really a once in a lifetime experience for me and I would recommend it to anybody who wants to learn how to code.  It was really the best investment I did on me, the only regret I have is that I didn’t know about it earlier.   I loved so much coding that I now want to do it as my day job as a web developer. So if I have only one advice to give to anyone doing Le Wagon Montreal, it would be: Take the time to enjoy every moment of this amazing experience as it passes really fast!

I applied to Le Wagon for two main reasons: I wanted to be able to build my own ideas, and acquire a skill that is becoming more relevant in each and every sector. 

With the bootcamp prep being my only technical experience, the fast paced program took us from Ruby basics to building our own ideas in the last weeks of the program. You learn something new each and every day, and only in the following weeks after the program you comprehend how solid the set of technical skills you have acquired are. The course is empowering because you learn a new language, you are enabled to build your own product, and understand how developers work, think and create. In addition, you meet a ton of cool people!

After Le Wagon I have returned to Norway to finish the last year of my bachelors degree, while working part-time on a startup idea I have been wanting to realize for a long time. Even though it is impossible to learn everything in nine weeks, you will learn what skills you need and how to acquire them in order to reach your goals. Le Wagon does not only open new possibilities, Le Wagon also helps you reach the reasons for why you wanted to get into coding in the first place.

I started coding about 3 years ago purely out of interest and loved it. Whilst at Oxford Univeristy, I got involved with lots of start ups in non-development positions due to my very basic skills. I came to realise that it wasn't really possible anymore to start a modern technology company without being a coder because even business roles require you to oversee other technology based workers. 

Le Wagon has helped me tremendously at solving this issue. They focus on teaching you the core skills you need to learn to code so that you can continue to learn quickly and effectively after the course. 

Also, the entrepreneurial twist in the last two weeks of the course is great at letting you specialise in areas of interest and provides a new way to learn that breaks the mould of repetitive exercises. For anyone who wants to start a company one day or sees themselves working in the technology industry, I would highly recommend doing the course!

After deciding that I wanted to pursue a career as a developer but not being realistically able to return to university for a full length CS course, I started looking for an avenue to learn skills that would make me job ready in a short period of time. After investigating the options for bootcamps in Tokyo, Le Wagon stood out for both its English language curriculum and high satisfaction ratings.  The level of support I received during and after the program far exceeded my expectations, and I was working as a developer within two weeks of graduating the program.

While the curriculum is comprehensive and the pace intense, working alongside a group of other students who are equally committed to learning is an extremely valuable experience. Concepts that would have ordinarily taken me years to grasp through self learning were learned through practical problem solving tasks and teamwork.

I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in learning to program with a focus on real world applications in a short amount of time. I can honestly say that I would not have the level of career satisfaction I do now had I not chosen to join the program.

I'm going to start this testimonial with an undeniable fact - Le wagon has completely transformed my life in the most amazing way possible.

 

As a guy in his mid-20’s with an Engineering career for the best part of a decade, I finally decided that I needed more from life. I wanted to do something creative, engaging and current; but, most importantly, I wanted to do it quickly. With a life-long passion for all things tech, a strong creative background and good logic skills gained from my former career, I landed at coding. After tonnes of research Le Wagon was a strong contender. But their glowing reviews made my decision easy - and one of the best I’ve ever made.

 

To try and relay my experience in mere words is difficult, but I will try to sum it up:

 

First of all, the course is not easy. It’s super intense and at the start, it may feel a little overwhelming. Fortunately, all they ask is that you turn up, stay attentive and put the work in. Rest assured, day by day it becomes easier.

 

You learn the basic concepts and start gaining knowledge and confidence. Slowly but surely, as a collective group, you learn together, at a pace which is quite remarkable. Before long, you will be writing code and building applications you never thought possible.

 

Learning how to code, however, is only one part of what you gain from Le Wagon. The other part is what makes the experience so special. It's the people. My batch was filled with some of the most intelligent, forward-thinking and all-round lovely people I've ever met.  And, the teaching and management staff are nothing short of inspiring. Right from day one, a very warm and supportive, family-like vibe is created; for me, this is the best thing about the course. Even after you’ve finished, the Le Wagon alumni network is always somewhere you can look for advice, support and opportunities.

My course ended at the beginning of December 2017 and by January 2018 I landed a job as a front-end JavaScript Developer. All in all, it took around 3 months to change my life. I owe it all to Le Wagon.

Dear Readers,

 

For the sake of UX in reading my testimonials, I will write in bullet points.

 

Degree:

            BA in architecture and economics

 

Work experience before joining Le Wagon:

·      teacher

·      account manager at SEO optimization firm

·      operations specialist at two global fast food chains

 

Coding experience:

            0

 

Main reason for joining Le Wagon:

·      I want to create social innovative projects and not be blindly and entirely reliant on outsourced developers

·      I want the freedom to create my own websites and express myself on the digital canvas as I wish

·      I believe being able to code a language will be as important as knowing how to speak English in the global market in the upcoming decade.

·      I took a few online courses but upon completion, I still didn't know how to implement what I just learned and didn't know how to troubleshoot by myself.  

 

The 3 big takeaways for me:

·      the understanding of core structure of coding languages

·      the ability to read error messages and able to find solutions online

·      the workflow required for a tech team to work efficiently and effectively

           

The best things about Le Wagon:

·      the mentors genuinely want to help prepare you for your next career goal

·      the diverse backgrounds of the mentors and classmates made the learning experience more valuable

·      if you ever want to revisit your course materials, you can revisit the lecture slides and the video - lifetime access!

·      when you graduate, you become part of an ever growing network of Le Wagon alumni. Also, when you travel to another city, you might be able to find someone to have a drink with!!

 

Lastly but most important note:

THIS COURSE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. It is very intensive. I strongly advise you not to juggle your job in the evenings or on the weekend. You will need your rest after a week of staring at screens all day. 

Don't join the program if you don't intend on prioritizing the learning experience as your #1 priority. Last two weeks are the project weeks where everyone will get to pitch an idea. Even if your idea doesn't get picked as one of the final projects, I assure you there are so many things you can learn in whichever role you end up with. During the 9 weeks, you are there to learn, NOT to launch a business. 

 

I wish you the best. 

Prior to joining Le Wagon, I was unsatisfied with my current job and unsure about which direction I wanted to go to in my life. Having previously had the chance to study coding but being unable to take it because I was moving out of the Philippines, I feel like I had missed out on the opportunity until I found Le Wagon in Tokyo. It was definitely one of the best decisions I have made.

Upon starting the bootcamp, I was honestly very nervous and unsure. I had never had coding experience beforehand and I was afraid that I would lag behind everyone else. True, at the beginning, it was a struggle but when they say “at some point, it will click,” it really did.

Being with so many other motivated individuals in such a diverse class with people from all over the world, it had become this fun adventure everyday. The challenges we were given throughout the bootcamp were indeed challenging but also taught me how to think logically and create good code. If there was something that I didn’t understand, there were always people there who could help me out and teach me.

Towards the end of the bootcamp, we were tasked to create a working website. That was probably the best part of the program. Here, we were able to apply everything we had learned throughout the camp. Not only that, we were taught how to work as a team, together with the use of GitHub and Trello to simulate a real working environment. I feel like that in general was an important aspect of the camp.

Overall, Le Wagon was all and more that it had promised. With a great curriculum, amazing teachers, and amazing students, it was the most fun I have ever had studying. From intense mornings and afternoons of coding to the late night drinking and karaoke sessions after a long week, to the hilarious Slack chats and the party parrot, there was never a dull moment when I took this camp.

As most of natural Entrepreneurs, I was full of ideas and I liked to indulge in fantasy about striking a great product. Fill my head with make-believe online courses and tutorials in CSS, HTML, Javascript, Python, Ruby, etc. It was fun but no productive.

I’ve worked in Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs for 4 years straight from a full year internship program into a great experience in New York working with great professionals who I really admire. I was working hard trying to place myself as a good employee and bringing new ideas to the table. However, the bank is Huge and meritocracy turned into long term career program. I wasn’t looking for that, I wanted to build from my own hands. Tried consulting for 2 years after Banking, got a great spot as leader in one the biggest success turnaround in Brazilian market helping companies negotiate more than 1bi brl in debt.

I decided to start my own business in 2015. My goal was very simple, help fast growing business grow faster. Sounds controversial but in fact many business run out of cash during growing periods and that’s when I came in, providing cash flow in a smart and fashion way, no bureaucracy I promised.

My first try was hiring a software company to start develop the product I was interested in. A kind of marketplace to help those growing business fund their invoices with better investors. I spent cash and time, nothing worked. My second try was to hire someone to start coding, during the interviews I was like “What I’m trying to evaluate here? I don’t even know why people keep repeating Java and Javascript, aren’t the same thing?”. Funny tough.

So, 2017 was THE year. I started fulling myself of online courses, tutorials, books, podcasts etc. I created my very first website with HTML, CSS and a very little of Javascript (at that time I already knew the difference). Ok, now next step, create a web application, a real product! Nothing I was working with could push me from knowing syntax to create a real product. How to connect front-end to back-end? How to create good schemas and software architecture? No tutorial could teach me that in time. I was struggling.

 

My Journey at Le Wagon Bootcamp

Regularly getting earlier, preparing myself to day class, getting my buddies coffee (I confess, never prepared the coffee) and kept myself really motivated. Formula to success. I did everything I could, every minute I had I was studying (or relaxing to empower the brain). First two weeks we learned bunch of syntax in Ruby. After that we started working with databases and first concepts of CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete). Then, we moved forward to Front-end, really hands on techniques to faster your development. Our batch sticked together, as a team, helping each other evolve. Finally everything were put together, we started develop our first web application using Rails, magic happened.

All preparations were meaningfully and every hour coding was worth it. At last 10 final days we had a challenge to build a product and show that product at Sao Paulo Google campus in a Open demoday to the community. If you want to check what we did, please check it out at www.advalori.com (if the link wasn’t online when you try to open it, its probably because we are launching our production version and going to the real market soon). You can watch our demoday in this link www.lewagon.com/demoday/106/advalori (in Portuguese).

On a lighter note, I finished Le Wagon’s Bootcamp more motivated than ever, it really was 9 weeks that changed my skills set completely, I still working out to improve myself as I coder but now I know how to navigate in this open ocean. Thank you for reading this. If you see yourself in a similar situation, let’s chat. I will be happy to help.

I attended Le Wagon in October 2017 (#103). It's phenomenal. I built multiple web sites, various scripts and an Fb messenger extension (Kitty, it’s live, check it out). I still hang out with my team. Plus, I’m grateful to be teaching at the next batch. And I've set up a web dev agency.

I’d done a fair bit of coding in C, HTML and generally just messing around as a teenager before. Never any Ruby though; nor had I talked to any developers before. I thought I might be ahead of my batch at the start. But it wasn’t an issue - the whole structure is quite relaxed. You can do extra exercises yourself, or spend time explaining code to your teammates (I found this surprisingly testing). Currently I feel confident enough to jump into conversations about software development and keep up.

I had just finished PPE at Oxford and halfheartedly went through the corporate rigmarole. Then I came to Le Wagon. Now career fairs (for software developers) are a different ball game. They just let all their prerequisites slide and offer to interview there and then. If you’ve applied to law/MC/banks, the difference is *stunning*.

Finally, the team is solid and energetic.

So, if you’re dithering, it’s worth the $. I’ve just paid mine off from cryptocurrency, much of which I learnt from interested people on batch #103. I never would have found out about this stuff if I hadn’t attended. So, in short, 5 stars!

I worked as a Product Manager for a PE fund for 2.5 years, but never knew how to code. I wanted to learn coding so that I could create my own prototypes and to better manage costs and timelines. I looked at a lot of courses and was worried they weren't business orientated enough. I saw the reviews for Le Wagon and was particularly interested in the business focus they have. 

The course is tough... it really is a bootcamp. That being said there were students of all levels, some who had HTML/CSS experience and others who had never worked on any aspect of an app before. By the time the project came along we all had skills needed to create the idea we wanted. My team made an activity booking app, I was honestly surprised by how much we were able to build in such a short time. 

If you are thinking of doing a bootcamp, I can't recommend this one enough. The community, teachers, events and support they give you is more than I had hoped for.

I did Le Wagon in Paris nearly one year and half ago, so i think this delay have given me the time to see what are the benefits and drawbacks (and i do not see any) of such experience.

First, i will summarize quickly the experience in itself because lots of people have already did it and my opinion will not vary from what the crowd usually says : Le Wagon is an outstanding experience, teachers are really well trained and the curriculum is always improved in a way that allows it to be reliable even after 4 years of existence. That being said, i will move to the "after Le Wagon part" because that is the kind of testimonial i was looking for when I was reading reviews before joining the bootcamp.

When I joined Le Wagon, i was a classic business student without any professional experience even interships, it was at the beginning of my gap year. Havind coded a little bit when I was a kid and wanting to work in the tech industry, It was natural for me to learn to code that is why I joined Le Wagon. When I finished the bootcamp, I started to look for an internship and I was amazed by the pace of the process, it was really much faster than when i was searching before Le Wagon. I quickly realized that I had a big and scarce asset giving me a strong advantage in the labor market. So, I was now in the position to choose rather than in the applicant one.

I joined an early-stage startup to do lots of things ranging from marketing, sales, and sometimes coding but I ended up coding like a full stack developer. At the end of my internship, I stayed three months more as a freelancer in this company which almost allowed me to pay back the investment of the bootcamp. Now I am finishing my sudies and will start to work but I am pretty confident in the future and like what I am doing. I will not look for a pure full stack developer job but rather in a position at the border between business and tech like growth hacker, product manager or even operations analyst.

Those positions are, according to me, the best for a business graduate after Le Wagon because they are perfectly suited for our profiles. First, software developers usually do not compete for them and secondly, we are ahead in terms of hard skills over classic business schools graduates (knowing SQL and a script language is even sometimes mandatory).

To conclude, the biggest benefit I got from Le Wagon was to get a singularity in comparison to the mass of business schools graduates. And when you have a singularity, it means less competition, higher compensations and more fullfilling jobs because you have more choices. So, what I expected from Le Wagon was exactly what I got. If you want to start the adventure, do not see it like an expense, It is definitively an investment and the ROI is phenomenal. For sure, we tend to see the absolute amount which seems huge at first, but, Le Wagon only cost me 16% of the cost of my business school but brought me much more than this number, think of it !

Jean de Colombel