Le Wagon

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!

Before starting at Le Wagon I had just graduated from the University of Southampton in Maths. After a year of half heartedly applying to grad schemes I didn’t want and trying to figure what I did want, I came across codecademy a free online course designed to teach you the basics of programming. I loved it and needed more! After some research a career in web development was the plan! I did not however want to spend the next 3 years at uni again… and thats when my research led me to Le Wagon.

Over the 9 weeks of the coding bootcamp we were trained to think like programmers through various exercises, had lectures and live code sessions every day (material which is available to alumni forever). The curriculum is well planned and consistently updated with a logical flow. The teachers were friendly and with ‘no question is a silly question’ attitude which to me was extremely comforting.
If you’re reading this, then you are wondering how this course has so many positive reviews: after completion, this just seems natural. My enjoyment was also mirrored by my peers who were all in the same boat, different back stories but all with the eagerness to learn. We are now part of a community of alumni where everyone helps each other.

With but 9 weeks of coding experience, my team and I successfully designed and developed a Facebook chatbot with a web application (www.voyagr.co.uk). The project we built was not something I could have imagined and something I am extremely proud of! Anyone who is prepared to embark on a 10 hour day, meeting like minded people and learning a LOT I thoroughly recommend Le Wagon!

My gut feeling during university was that there was some spark within me missing. I studied economics and management but it never truly captivated me or made me motivated to go on to learn more. I knew my real passion was somewhere out there but yet to be found. After graduating, I got bored of the UK and flew out to Amsterdam to work within consumer electronics. During this spell, I had a lot of contact with new start ups trying to promote their new tech products and could see the hard work but enjoyment in their eyes building it all. All this talk about software engineering, product design, programming got me very curious.

Then I found Le Wagon, a 9 week bootcamp which would take a total rookie and transform him into a confident developer with the tech tools to make ideas become a reality. I learned an incredible range of skills and really demonstrated this through our UniTixHub web-app (a hassle free solution of uni students exchanging tickets) which was a pleasure to demo at Google Campus. This has inspired me to continue learning, starting with React & Redux. But just as importantly, the friends and network I made along the way was the icing on the cake to confidently say it was one of the best experiences of my life.

If you are looking for a change in career or simply just curious, please don’t hesistate to join Le Wagon, I can promise you will not regret it!

In a nutshell – Le Wagon, London is a fantastic coding bootcamp - I highly recommend it.

Prior to joining the January 2018 batch, I had been working in sustainability consulting for several years. But I needed a change and having an interest in tech startups and an ambition to launch a business, I went part time to pursue an idea. Soon I had launched a Wordpress site to gauge market interest and start solving the problem. The feedback was OK but ultimately it brushed over the pain and didn’t adequately offer a solution. It needed more, I needed to iterate the site but where next? I didn’t know a great deal about any of the tech stacks and even if I had the money to spend how was I meant to brief developers? How would I know I was getting value for money? It soon became clear that my lack of knowledge here was a barrier. So, I researched resources and started some lessons on freecodecamp. Don’t get me wrong, their resources are good but it was slow-going for me and I didn’t feel I had enough direction. I felt I needed to properly dive-in to jump start progress!

So I checked out a few bootcamps. After attending a couple of events from Le Wagon, including attending the previous batch’s demo day and having a conversation with Ed (the guy who runs things in London), I felt this was the right bootcamp for me.

I wasn’t wrong – it was a challenging 9 weeks but it was definitely worth it. Structured lessons every morning and lots of practice for the rest of the day – tiring stuff. But the teachers and teaching assistants really do help and are there for you if you are seriously stuck (it will happen)! The structure of the course was great and even though things in the tech industry change quickly the teaching team clearly adapts lessons to accommodate for them. In the last three weeks you put it all in to practice with your own projects - for the creative and entrepreneurial this is fantastic!

In those final 2 weeks, with the help of two great classmates, my site was rebuilt (www.oscapes.tech). Rebuilt is the wrong word … it’s more than that, it’s dynamic and is built on a Ruby on Rails tech stack that I understand, know how it works and can change myself! I met great people (teachers and classmates included), learnt a lot and had a great time! I couldn’t ask more from the course and look forward to the journey ahead!

This time last year I was a ski instructor.

In some ways it was exactly the dream I had imagined, I loved the town I lived in, I loved the people I met and I loved the vast mountain scenery. What I didn’t love so much were the uncertain hours, the ridiculously low pay and the repetitive work. After a couple of years in Canada I resolved to start a real career and turned to something I had always had an interest in, tech.

I started my journey alone, doing online coding courses via resources like CodeCademy and Udemy, but I soon found that I wasn’t really absorbing the knowledge. I felt like I was following instructions and copying code rather than understanding the reasons behind what I was doing. As a result, I took the decision to fast-track my learning by applying to a coding bootcamp. Finding Le Wagon wasn’t hard, googling “best coding bootcamp in London” brought up a number of ranking and comparison sites and they all ranked Le Wagon #1, having just finished the nine week course myself, it’s easy to see why.

The first week is a bit of a culture shock, you come to realise the magnitude of what you don’t know and start to think that there is no way you can gain any meaningful understanding in the nine weeks you have here. Then, slowly, things begin to fall into place, you start to understand how Ruby works and the potential power it has. This understanding builds day on day, week on week until all of a sudden you find yourself with an extensive knowledge, and more importantly, understanding, of Ruby’s inner workings. After this you start to learn about front-end development, with HTML, CSS and Javascript before jumping into the rails framework and seeing everything you have learned come together into a cohesive end result.

The final two weeks were the most enjoyable of the nine, pitching ideas and splitting into teams to build your own apps was an awesome experience. I was part of a team of four which built a facebook chatbot and associated rails app called Voyagr which provides tailored travel inspiration. In week one I would never have believed it possible that I could create something so complex, but by week seven I was itching to put my hard earned knowledge to the test and my confidence was sky high.

Throughout the nine weeks you are surrounded by teachers and teaching assistants ready to further explain the finer points of the days topic as well as provide a helping hand debugging your code. These are the people who make Le Wagon truly special, their ability to confer understanding is second to none and is the reason why I have learned in nine weeks what would have taken my years to learn by myself.

Having finished batch #123 I have started learning Node and ReactJS at a pace which far outsrips my first forays into the coding world. This is something which Le Wagon teaches almost as a byproduct; the knowledge and mindset which allows you to go on from the course and further your understanding in whatever direction you choose. The resources Le Wagon supplies after the course has finished coupled with an very active 2000+ alumni network means that even though I have finished the nine week bootcamp I don’t feel like I’ve finished with Le Wagon, quite the opposite in fact, I feel like I’m just starting.

After finishing at Cambridge University and getting job offers I was not particularly keen on, I decided to take a year to just  do all the things I had put off and at the top was learning how to code because I wanted the ability to build my ideas for cool products and services.
 
Before I jumped on Le Wagon 9-week intensive coding bootcamp, I researched all the coding resources. I came across free sites such Codecademy and sites like Udemy that have top quality content at an affordable price.

I also checked out loads of youtube tutorials and got to grips with the jargon but came to the conclusion that for me, I needed to throw myself in the deep end and JUST DO IT if I ever wanted to jumpstart my goal because I learn best when there is pressure and lots of things to get done. Otherwise, I would waste precious time and energy trudging along. This is why I ultimately decided to go the coding bootcamp-route and London is amazing for this as there are so many options for various goals.

I came across General Assembly and attended their events, I liked their weekend courses (you can do front end and back end separate at a slow pace) and the intensive option ('come at me bro'- pace) which I leaned towards. Then I got in touch with Makers Academy and they did the intense approach while hooking you up to a paid gig at the end of it which I thought was pretty cool. However, it was when I came across Le Wagon and saw these fun-loving people with pure passion going after their unique goals that I knew this is where I was going to learn the best because I loved the vibe and the genuine camaraderie of the people. Most places are very transactional, which is fair enough because it's a business but that's not Le Wagon. It genuinely is a community and people gravitate towards like-minded peers/instructors to further their goals. Yeah, you pay for the course but you quickly realize that it's so much more than just a course, it is a way of approaching the tech sector from problem solving to networking to exploring cool ideas to figuring out where you want to be and how best to get there as so many experienced devs, product managers, founders/cofounders are regularly invited to talk about their experiences and field questions at Le Wagon's working space. Seriously, how cool is Le Wagon that you can code all day getting, getting stuck, fixing the bug(s) and in the evening you are sat in front of legends asking all your serious/silly questions to someone that has done what you want to do or think you want to do? I absolutely loved it and learned so much that would have taken me months if not a few years to cover through simply asking the right questions to the right people. It's priceless (it's 6.5 but you know what I mean).
I am currently done with bootcamp and got to work on one of my ideas to solve a problem that has been nagging at me for years. I will have a market of one so things are already looking up!
If you want to just learn how to code, build a business, meet cool people who chase their goals proactively and have deep meaningful conversations over lunch/drinks…. I recommend Le Wagon London without hesitation. 

Le Wagon Bali is the best place to learn programming! I attended the bootcamp without any prior coding experience and after only 2 months of the bootcamp, my team and I successfully built a working prototype of RunDB (https://www.run-db.com). I never thought this would be possible before coming to Bali!
A little bit about myself…
After 4 years of working in sales and business development, I wanted to be an entrepreneur and launched my own startup Atletude. Without any coding knowledge, I could only count on my developer friends to help me code my web app. But after a while I felt I was limited from contributing to my project and could not properly communicate my ideas with my developers. So, I decided to quit my job and learn to code.
What can you expect from the bootcamp?
You will find that the first few weeks of the bootcamp are built to be very challenging as it is a series of days of fast paced and intensive learning of new concepts. However, don't be worried because there is more than enough resources to see that you pull through. The teaching community will provide one-to-one time if you need and the unique pedagogy encourages you to learn with the fellow students and you are never left alone. Then slowly, you will start to see how all the concepts you learn come together and as if by magic you will start coding! By the final 2 weeks of the camp, you will be able to design and develop a working web app and work as a team like developers do. This rapid progress completely exceeded my expectation of what the bootcamp can deliver in such a short time! In the end, I learnt five new languages and understood how developers think, design, work together and create web apps which was exactly what I came to to Bali to learn.
And why did I choose Le Wagon Bali of all places?
I was trying to decide which city of Le Wagon would help my learning experience the most. In the end, I chose Bali and brought along my wife and my 2 month old baby. And so far, it was the best decision of my life! Imagine surfing in the morning, coding in the day and enjoying beautiful sunsets on the beach or in one of the many cool restaurants in Canggu with your new friends at the bootcamp - this is just regular life at Le Wagon Bali and not an exaggeration of what you can expect. On top of the relaxing environment to help me learn to code, the extremely well organised camp and the extra activities also enriched my experience. We were even brought on a boat trip to nearby islands and given interesting talks and workshops about the tech world. And did I mention the amazing morning coffee?!? The whole experience was so amazing that, and I know it doesn’t really make sense, I would love to do the same bootcamp all over again