Le Wagon

I started Le Wagon in January 2015 (Batch #6). Before that I had been a corporate finance consultant at one of the « Big Four » for 4 years (right after graduating from HEC a French Business School). I had no engineering background at all.

Le Wagon is in my opinion the best European coding bootcamp and I'd advise anyone to take up the challenge. They have a unique way of teaching the technical skills you need to work in a tech startup. It's also a great option if you are considering to launch your own startup. After Le Wagon, though I had no computing background before joining the program, I was able to code from scratch and launch a web application and an iOS app. I got selected to demo the app at the 2015 edition of Challenge.rs (http://challenge.rs/) in Barcelona. Le Wagon's teaching gave me the possibility to code the POC that I had in mind. 

Now after Le Wagon
Now I'm a product specialist at Algolia, a startup that developed an extremely fast and relevant search engine for websites and mobile applications.  

I just graduated from le Wagon 2 weeks ago (batch #24) and I can only encourage every aspiring entrepreneur to attend this awesome bootcamp. Here is a quick overview of my experience there.

The Jungle

Before joining Le Wagon, I worked almost 10 years in the cinema industry. I enjoyed it, had wonderful experiences, traveled a lot but something was missing. Besides my love for art, I was also a tech lover and my curiosity for the entrepreneur world was growing every day. I wanted to join the people who build the future and try to bring something better to this world. It quickly became obvious that learning to code was the next step. I wanted to be able to prototype a product, talk with other developers, understand how the products that I love are made but even with strong motivation, learning from any online courses was discouraging me:

- What do I have to learn first ?

- Why this language and not another ?

- Why am I able to validate a course and still don't see how to even start building anything ?

I was stuck in the Jungle. After reading some reviews of Le Wagon and checking their Youtube channel, I decided to join the course. What I have done in 9 weeks is beyond what I expected from the bootcamp. I don't think I could have done it alone even with a full year working on it.

The Program

Don't fool yourself, learning to code is hard. The first weeks were very rich of information, and sometimes frustration, but I was completely loving it! The secret of Le Wagon is somewhere here. Passionate teachers, exercises smartly spread to bring you step by step to the next keypoint. I took those 9 weeks like a journey and embraced the flow. More than skills what you will learn is an approach and a way of thinking like an experienced developer. You will be able to work in team and unchain yourself from the traps where many beginners stay forever. Being supported by teaching assistants that know what you are experiencing because they all went through the program is also very clever.

The community, the future

Spending 9 weeks with people who share the same mindset and coming from many different industries is also a strong reason for attending Le Wagon. Your network will grow fast and open your future to many new routes. All the students share a culture that is empowered by tools like Slack and Le Wagon's platforms. I also learned a lot about myself and now feel able to keep improving my coding skills. I can start from scratch any project and add new bricks to the solid base I have built during Le Wagon.

I started Le Wagon in April 2016 and I loved it!

Work hard and challenge yourself

I was working in a digital marketing consulting firm for 3 years when I started feeling the need to learn something new, something fresh. My job wasn’t fulfilling anymore, I felt I was missing something and I wanted a change. That’s when I thought “Why not coding?” So, I decided to join Le Wagon to work in a booming and challenging environment, to acquire technical skills and to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. 

The whole experience lasts 9 weeks but time flies when you love what you’re doing! Le Wagon has a top-notch approach that enables any student - no matter what his background is - to quickly learn the basics of front and back web development. The program is very well conceived; you spend enough time learning the core concepts of web development, you switch between back-end and front-end languages, you learn how to use frameworks, you work on a copy-cat of Airbnb’s website and you get to code your own web app during the last two weeks. The tools and resources we use are extremely efficient and built in-house by Le Wagon’s team which makes the learning experience even more interesting. But overall, I guess that people are Le Wagon’s best asset; the teachers are super smart, inspiring and dedicated to our success and the students are ambitious with a great positive mindset. You will never be alone at Le Wagon; the community is tightly-welded and enthusiastic; there is always someone for you when you need help – a student, a teacher or an alumnus.

Learn more about yourself

When I first started the program I had no idea that I would end up prototyping my own product, Matchee, a C2C web app to buy and sell clothes nearby. Honestly, my first two days at Le Wagon were kind of harsh, I wondered if I would be able to make it till the end. Again, the program is intensive, you should be ready to dedicate yourself to coding during 2 months but the challenge is worth the time and the effort spent!

The 3 last weeks of the program (copycatting Airbnb’s website + prototyping a product) were my favorites. Working in a team with other developer students is super challenging and rewarding. You learn a lot about yourself and you start imagining your future as a coder. I, for example, developed my MVP with 2 amazing guys who became real friends. We’ve managed to implement technical features in our web app that we’d never thought we’d be able to code before (tinder-like swipe/match, messaging functionalities…).  I know that I would have never done so much in so little time without taking the course – big up to Le Wagon talented staff for that!

And now, what's next?

Joining a web native startup as a Product Owner working hand-in-hand with developers (they don’t impress me anymore <3) + improve the concept of my MVP to work on it as a side project. Le Wagon is definitely a life-changing experience!

Hi all! I am a ‘Le Wagon’ alumni from Batch 11 (summer 2015). Le Wagon has been tremendously helpful in my personal and professional development and I wanted to share my experience with you.

I came from an aerospace engineering and corporate finance background. I had worked 1 year in several early stage startups and 2 years in strategy consulting. I was looking for a change but was not very clear on which direction to take.

I would strongly recommend Le Wagon to those who are looking: to aspiring developers, to aspiring Product Managers, to aspiring CEOS, to all those who would like to land on positions that are closer to a (tech) product.

Learning a skill in the best conditions
Teachers and teaching assistants at Le Wagon are 100% committed to your success and adapt their methodology to the students’ level, which is especially relevant at the start (when all students do not have the same programming background) and at the end of the bootcamp when students are carrying out their own project and need expertise on very specific topics (e.g., some students would use React for their project).

Of course, if your goal is to become a ‘fullstack’ developer, there is a long way to go after Le Wagon, but those who are motivated and stick to it become very successfull.

Understanding a whole ecosystem
When I joined le Wagon, I knew what agile development meant, but I did not know who was doing what. If you are interested in tech but the roles within a tech team are not clear to you, I would highly recommend that course. After 2.5 months, you are able to have an educated discussion with a UX designer, an UI designer, a front-end, a back-end developer, and a Product Manager.

Learning to code - if need be :)
Le Wagon program embeds courses on the lean methodology during which students build a product from scratch, without a single line of code - only by connecting existing services. A must for future bootstrappers !

Above all - learning to learn
Learning to learn is the one skill that should be in everyone’s survival kit these days! Our generation has to learn one, if not several skills per year and we have to be equipped with the right mindset to absorb that knowledge.

Learning to learn is by far the most valuable skill that I have learnt at Le Wagon. Why and how? Because coding is harsh - Your program does not work - But it did yesterday at 11pm! - Now it is all bugged - You have to fix it - You have no clue what the problem is!

The only thing you DO KNOW is that you won’t give up until it is fixed and that you have plenty of resources and people to help you out. 

A 5-star learning experience

  Life-changing I decided to learn how to code after getting really frustrated by not understanding and not being able to do what my developers friends and coworkers were doing. And I no longer feel that way - mission accomplished. Efficient If you've tried to learn to code by yourself, you will know that the learning curve is often pretty flat, you can easily get lost in the amount of content you find online. One huge advantage of the bootcamp is to focus on the useful tools and techniques. Rewarding The satisfaction of building something from scratch is immense. You'll learn enough to design an app, write the code and push to a production environment.  Intense There is a lot to learn in 9 weeks, so the teaching speed is definitely fast. But, some sessions are reserved for students who don't feel comfortable yet with some concepts, to make sure nobody is left behind. Long-lasting You will develop a "developer mindset" - a mix of patience, autonomy and critical thinking. You will learn a foundation of concepts and methodologies to build on following  the end of the bootcamp.
  Focus on product
  One of the focuses of the bootcamp is product. There is a class specifically dedicated to product management, but Product is not limited to that class...it is always at the core of the training.
What business problem are you trying to solve? Which core features should you develop first? What other products can you use to minimize the investment, increase efficiency? How can you improve your user experience design?
All teachers are not only very good at technical stuff but also very strong at product, which is awesome. It makes a difference - you don't only learn to build stuff, but also what and how to build.     After Le Wagon   There is a decent amount of students who decide to start their business right after Le Wagon. Some of them become junior developers and get hired right away. I was not planning on ever becoming a developer, but instead to keep growing in product management. After graduating, I had several opportunities to choose from in Paris and the US. A year later, Le Wagon is still definitely a huge plus. Not only does it looks good on a resume (probably the majority of my so-called hard skills), it also made me technical enough for it never to be an issue during my job search.     Work hard, play hard    Last but not least, the teaching team and students are definitely what makes Le Wagon so great. The group got together really fast and programming in small groups definitely helps learning from your peers. 
Frequent happy hours, startup talks and meetups make the group of students and alumni connect with the local startup and tech community, which is incredibly valuable during and after the bootcamp.

★★★★★

TL, DR:

It changed my life. Removed the fear of not being technical— great friends and memories I will never forget.

I spent an entire year learning to code. I tried everything:

- Codecademy

- learn Python the hard way

- Coursera

- Code School

But I still sucked. I couldn’t even write a simple program. Was I stupid? Maybe.

But I decided to try a new approach and registered to Le Wagon after hearing great feedback. After 9 weeks, I was able to build Impact—a tool for retrieving and analyzing Twitter data. I even wrote one of the program’s main algorithms. Maybe not that stupid after all.

Le Wagon isn’t a course--it’s a life experiment.

BE WITH LIKE MINDED PEOPLE

Why is learning to code so hard? Because it’s lonely. Oh man, try to read documentation written by coders, for coders, when you’ve never been on those websites. It’s a pain. Nobody wants to help you—« READ THE FUCKING MANUAL », they say—and it quickly gets discouraging. I don’t want more homework again.

But that doesn’t happen at Le Wagon—you’re not alone. You make friends. Each day, you are paired with someone from your batch—your buddy for the day. You don’t have any excuses for not collaborating and you’ll end up creating relationships with everyone in your class. You learn how to pair-program, how to help (and ask for help), and create long-lasting relationships. Many end up working together—some even start companies.

So no more loneliness, but a great environment to learn, meet and grow.

LEARN USEFUL STUFF BY DOING A LOT

The main problem with learning anything is putting in the required amount of intensity. I could have spent years learning code in a half-assed way, like I was doing. I would still not know how to code.

Le Wagon makes you DO stuff. To my great pleasure, lessons laster only one hour—the perfect time to give the essentials and keep everyone interested—and gave place to 8 hours of intense coding. Exercices, product-building, real-life challenges. They’re here to make you BUILD stuff.

Traditional education leaves you in the world without any skills. Le Wagon teaches you practical and professional-level skills in 9 weeks.

I couldn’t design a simple web page when I started. After 9 weeks, I could build AirBnB.

That’s effectiveness.

CHANGE YOUR LIFE BY KNOWING MORE ABOUT YOURSELF

We spend so much time speculating, fantasizing on our lives. Maybe I should have been a lawyer, I should have traveled more, I should have become a developer.

But there’s no way to know if you like something but trying it with a deadline and a lot of intensity. Le Wagon makes you grow as a person by increasing your self-awareness: it helps you know yourself better.

Do you like working in teams? You will know.

Do you like building tech products? You will know.

Do you want to be a software engineer, an entrepreneur, a product manager? You will know.

I wanted to code because I was scared I couldn’t be an entrepreneur otherwise. I didn’t know if I had it in me. I didn’t know if it was useful. I was fantasizing, again.

Then I spent 9 weeks coding all day. That’s 400 hours.

Now I know. If everything goes to flames, if my business fails and my girlfriend leaves me, if I’m expelled from my place and have zero friends left, I won’t be scared.

I found something I love doing. That’s worth everything.

Thank you Le Wagon.

I have been hanging around Le Wagon for over a year now, and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had, certainly one of the most valuable decisions I've made in the past.

 

Keep your mind open

In January 2015, I decided to apply to Le Wagon FullStack program in order to learn programming but also to keep my mind open. I finished school about 10 years ago and I never took time to train myself after that.

 

For me as an entrepreneur, being aware that there are so many things to learn was as crucial as gaining these actual skills. I worked on my own before joining the bootcamp, in order not to be completely lost, since I was not an engineer. Those 8 hours spent discovering Pascal language back when I was a kid would not happen to be that helpful…

And I worked a lot during the bootcamp. 9 hours in front of your code every day, and some more at night, 9 weeks straight. Pretty intense!

 

How does the web works?

I attended Le Wagon in order to understand how those web and mobile apps work. At first, I did not envisage to build a Tesla or a revolutionary AI software. I still don't. My intention was to get how AirBnb and Twitter function behind the curtain. The famous MVP approach! And when you start seeing the way these apps work, you feel empowered to build your own stuff.

 

Many new projects!

After I ended the bootcamp, I decided to stay in touch with the team that runs Le Wagon. I just loved the atmosphere. It's so stimulating to see 10 new business projects every other month! I am now a part-time Teacher Assistant for the next batches, helping them understand the crucial notions of Ruby, Rails, SQL, htlm and JavaScript.

 

Click

I definitely had the desire to start a new business after Le Wagon. It just reinforced that feeling. Something just clicked in my mind: « now, you can build projects on your own! ». I had previously started and failed on projects where I heavily depended on some other people's skills to make them work. Now I could launch things without being dependent. So important!

 

Mission Biberon

The last two weeks of the bootcamp were dedicated to our own projects. With a fellow student, I coded the elearning platform for future parents called www.MissionBiberon.com, with a video viewer, text recaps and quizzes. Since then, we've been working on the content, and a dozen episodes are now live!

This is just the beginning of Mission Biberon, but the first feedbacks are awesome. And I know I probably wouldn't have started this without Le Wagon.

 

So if you have the guts to start a business and 2 month to spare, you shouldn't even be reading the end of this comment, apply!

I was a student in batch #18 of Le Wagon (January 2016) and loved the experience. I came from a web-marketing background (acquisition & CRM) and was looking for web development training to be able to work better with technical teams.

Le Wagon provides in 9 weeks a very complete training on the basics of front & back-end web development, enabling you to very easily continue learning code quickly by yourself. As a bonus, it gives you a good flavor of what is product development, pitching a project and entrepreneurship.

It has a great and extremely available teaching staff, great courses and resources that remain fully available after the end of the training. Rhythm is intense but very balanced between courses, exercises and conferences with entrepreneurs. Atmosphere is extremely friendly and motivating.

Looking at former students’ careers evolution after le Wagon, this training really answers to a wide range of objectives: become a developer, entrepreneur or just gain technical background.

In summary, it was an amazing experience!

I started Le Wagon in October 2015 and it was the best decision of my life !

The reason :

« In the new economy, computer science isn't an optional skill. It's a basic skill » - Barack Obama

I’ve always been interested in technology & innovation and how these two are transforming our world. Being able to understand and actually control the tools that are now ruling the world is in my opinion mandatory for everyone in the future, so I had to learn it myself.

The one thing that struck me the most during the bootcamp is the amount of knowledge and skills I developed in such a short period of time. I give credit for that to the amazing program they developed . The way the program is structured and the resources they provide is THE real added value of this bootcamp ! Another great added value is the Alumni community. They make sure that you are well connected to every people that has already been a Wagoner and that you can ask questions, find jobs, find partners and so on.

One important thing to know before applying though, is that Le Wagon has a clear entrepreneurial angle & mindset! Throughout the bootcamp, we had introductions to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship concepts/tools, so if you have no interest in entrepreneurship AT ALL maybe it’s not the best option. However I think that even for non-entrepreneurs these concepts are super interesting, whereas for (aspiring) entrepreneurs, it’s a huge added value!

As a result of my bootcamp, I ended up developing BOOSTin, a growth hacking tool for brands on Instagram. With BOOSTin, brands can get relevant data about their own activity and their competition’s in order to increase the efficiency of their marketing activity on Instagram.

In definitive, I would TOTALLY recommend Le Wagon to anyone, from anywhere, at any age, with any background. It is a life changing experience.

I am alumni of Le Wagon batch #3 (September 2014). Here is my story since I graduated.

Before Le Wagon

Before joining Le Wagon, I studied web-marketing during 2 years but did not like the way it was taught, so I quit. I really wanted to be able to develop my own products at the time. That's why I decided to join Le Wagon, which seemed to be a very product-oriented program which teaches you programming but also gives you good practices and tools to build a tech product.

Just after the program

I kept on working on TrackGuru (https://www.lewagon.com/blog/interview-thomas-chretien-trackguru) the MVP I had developed within the two last weeks of the program. The platform reached 500 subscribers, but it was taking me too much time for marketing / communication, and I decided to take some distance and go back to programming smile emoticon

After being a TA (teaching assistant), I joined Le Wagon's team as frontend developer to increase my expertise under the mentoring of Sebastien and Boris. In less than a year we released Le Wagon Ondemand (https://ondemand.lewagon.org/), the Alumni platform (http://alumni.lewagon.org) and the new version of Le Wagon's website (the current one). I learned React.js, sharpen my CSS and Javascript skills and, of course, kept on doing some Rails.

Adopting a digital nomad lifestyle

That was a crazy year! My coding skills increased exponentially and I also learnt a lot about myself. After a year of coding I took some time off, I moved to Brazil for some weeks and I spent time in front of the Ocean, enjoying Yoga lessons. Quickly I realized I missed coding. I thought about my TrackGuru experience, and I decided to launch a new product, same style, with a different angle, and of course new skills! I took time to analyse my mistakes, and to refine what will be later Hubum (http://www.hubum.com/).

Hubum is the Product Hunt of electro vinyl albums releases. The idea is to allow users to discover the vinyl release culture, and to become a reference digger in this niche. What we need to know is that all labels are working closely with techno artists to produce their vinyl release. A vinyl album is a bit as a story with a lot of protagonists and substance around the material. Releases fans are crazy about it, and represent a constant community, sensible and engaged, always looking for good new sounds, favouring quality to quantity.

In parallel, we try to engage a maximum of our curators/guests by inviting them to share in exclusivity their discovery on the platform. The challenge is to find renowned influencers (artists, youtubers) willing to help us. Some great names join us already: Audu Simion (hubum.com/andusimion), Moskalus (http://www.hubum.com/moskalus)), Hurfyd (hubum.com/hurfyd)…

Next step

I like the digital nomad lifestyle. I want to continue teaching at Le Wagon (Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels), travel, make some freelancing and personal projects, and keep learning new stuff every day.

I am really grateful to Le Wagon. It's crazy how they helped me develop my coding skills so quickly. I can know build all the products I want.

But above all, they also helped me find myself and work and live my life the way I want.

I was a student at Le Wagon (batch #6) and then a Teaching Assistant for couple of batches.

THE 9 WEEK EXPERIENCE AND BEYOND
For me Le Wagon is not only the kickoff I needed back then to get up to speed with start-up best practices and gain coding skills but also, what I've realised one year and an half after completing the bootcamp, a resourceful and very active community on a day to day basis.

The experience of Le Wagon goes way above the 9 weeks of the bootcamp. We have an alumni platform that gets improved all the time, almost weekly events to keep up with code improvement as well as start-up best practices, and four huge (free) parties per year to meet other batches émoticône smile

Not to mention the amazing group of friends I kept from this 9 week journey.

ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL
Although not everybody would benefit similar output going thru this experience. After being a student and a Teaching Assistant I would highly recommend Le Wagon to 3 main profiles :

- Entrepreneurs
- People who want to become full-stack developer
- Product owners, growth marketer and people who will work on a daily basis with developers

If you have one of these profiles, you can’t get wrong with Le Wagon and the program will benefit you almost immediately.

Personally, I find myself in these three profiles. After working with several start-ups as a freelance developper, I’ve finally joined a French start-up as the CTO (https://www.bobdepannage.fr/la-team-bob-depannage/) and my work is now a mix of code / product management / entrepreneurial thinking.

CONCLUSION
You have two main questions to ask yourself.

- Is a coding bootcamp the best way to accelerate/change my professional path?
- If so, which one to choose?

For the first question, I hope I gave you some insights about things to consider. For the second one, you should really not hesitate, Le Wagon is a great program! If you live within 45min where Le Wagon is (yes it’s 9 intensive weeks and you better reduce your commute) this is definitely the coding bootcamp you should go for.

I was one of the students of batch 4 in Paris (end of 2014).

Being a student at Le Wagon helped a lot for my career in tech. I had a growth marketing background and really needed to have a technical perspective to be better at my work.

First, the hard skills you learn over there are very valuable. I can now build MVPs with Ruby on Rails and HTML/CSS by myself. I can also tweak websites - which is useful to implement tracking codes or make some changes on frontend for instance. 

Second, it enabled me to understand coding culture and to be able to collaborate efficiently with developpers. This is a substential strength during my everyday life at a startup. I am now able to be more relevant with my ideas that require technical work; being able use Github or to chat about APIs is also useful when you are surrounded by developpers!

Last, the people I met during the program are high quality. The students are mostly entrepreneurs and share a great mindset. The teachers are super smart & encouraging. Also, Le Wagon being embeded in the Paris startup scene, I met several pretty impressive founders (Algolia, Front, Sunrise...). 

In a word, Le Wagon enabled me to be more powerful as a person. I don't feel stuck by my lack of tech skills anymore. I definitely recommend this coding bootcamp!