Le Wagon

Le Wagon is the greatest learning experience I've done in my life.   By fate, I got interested in coding throught a very basic (and optional) course of web programming during the last semester of my BBA in Finance in Montreal. I immediately knew that I had to learn more about programming and try to move away from a banking job that would have probably (surely) bored me to death. I did some researches and found out you can actually learn enough to start a new career in the tech industry in only 9 weeks of coding bootcamp, and with a great deal of motivation and determination: https://www.lewagon.com/ One month after the bootcamp and thanks to Le Wagon's community and help, I was able to find a job in Paris/Marseille as a Front-End developer in a fintech startup. I can assure you that you will never regret the skills you will acquire, the people you will meet, and the experience you will live during these 9 weeks.   Change your life, learn to code. Raphael Regnier - Le Wagon student batch-77 Montréal

Prior to the Bootcamp I've been working in different commercial companies which I worked at during and after my Marketing and Business Studies. Before these sales and marketing driven years I got the news I would be visual impaired in the future which in the end would set me all the way back to not being able to work at a normal job. My love for computers was put away due the fact I would not be able see a computer screen in the near future. However, I couldn't foreclose my natural passion for tech. After approximately 8 years, which included many operations on my eyes, I finally got some good news. Which was that my operation succeeded and I would be able to see more in the future.

During this period, I was fortunate enough to work in the same building as Le Wagon Amsterdam. Knowing my eyes would improve over time and having learnt about Le Wagon, I knew I had to pursue my love for technology. I did my research on Le wagon and decided that this would be the perfect place to learn how to code. At the start (and today) I still didn't have full vision and I was afraid this would limit my ability to learn during the Bootcamp. Reviews helped me a lot to overcome this difficult decision.

The alumni who wrote these reviews didn't lie! I can tell for certain that when a company is able to learn a visual impaired person to code; they are able to learn everybody who is motivated enough to learn this new skillset! The learning environment is very structured and provides multiple ways of learning or recapping your knowledge (e.g. daily flashcards, video lectures/tutorials). After the morning lecture you start working on your challenges to apply the knowledge you learned before. There is a team of amazing and motivated teachers walking around that are eager to share their knowledge with you and help you out. 

Also they designed the way how you gather the knowledge during this Bootcamp very well. This is something which is really hard to explain, but cannot be missed once you are following this Bootcamp or even when you are done with the Bootcamp. Actually it is kind of amazing how much you're able to learn in such a short period.

I would recommend this Bootcamp to everyone who is willing to commit their time in learning to code. Actually I think learning to code is an essential skill which should be thought to all kids in the world. Because not only gives this skill a lot of job opportunities, it also changes the way you think, look and deal with some real world aspects and problems. So to end this long review:

Following this course changed my life and I hope it will change yours!

My name is George, and I’m a farmer looking to change how we buy our groceries. I work with my mum, on our 52 acre organic farm near Byron Bay, Australia (Check it out on instagram @farm.and.co ). However it wasn’t always as easy and idyllic as it sounds. For a long time, we were selling to wholesale markets, and struggling to make a profit. Not long ago we changed our business model, and now sell all of our products direct to consumer, at our doorstep. In this model, we see an opportunity for customers to buy direct from the farmer whilst also providing producers with a fair wage.

I want to bring this model to more farmers and food makers. So I decided to go to LeWagon.

At LeWagon, I was lucky to meet some amazing people from all around the world. Some of which I am still working on projects with today. Each day we worked on projects and challenges, and 9 weeks later we each know how to code. The bootcamp was amazing, including patient, caring teachers, awesome facilities for all the students and yoga each week as promised.

It’s still hard to believe I can now code. I feel like a magician. Almost anything I want to create, I can. Currently I am perfecting my idea and will be launching on the 12th of May. You can view it at farmandco.com.au

After running my own company for 4 years, I needed a change of scene. I had always loved design and anything to do with computers, so I settled on a coding bootcamp as my next step.

I talked to (and visited) a few other schools, and I eventually settled on Le Wagon - primarily due to their ‘coding for entrepreneurs’ angle. I had an idea for my own product, and they were going to help me build it. This seemed like a huge advantage - to be able to come out of the bootcamp with an actual MVP.

The course itself was incredible. Incredibly challenging and incredibly rewarding in equal measure! It was non-stop, and I felt like I was learning awesome new stuff every day from expert (and very nice!) teachers. Plus, my course mates were a mix of ages and backgrounds from all around the world, which made it even more fun.

There’s genuinely nothing I wouldn’t recommend about doing a course at Le Wagon. You’ll learn more than you’ve ever learnt in your life, you’ll come out the other side with avenues into opportunities that you never dreamed would be attainable, and you’ll make friends for life. What’s not to like?!

I have this basic theory on a job that after 6 months you know what you are doing, if you don’t have the opportunity to learn new things in your job, considered it over. So after a business school in Paris and more than a year in a US firm, I chose to quit in order to fulfill the need to learn new things and also, actually build stuff.

I had the chance to be part of the creation of a startup in my studies, all those web principles that you may have heard of, but that you don’t study in Business school, such as MVP, prototyping, UX/UI and of course web development. Those concepts are well-documented on the internet if you wanna get a deep dive into it, but I don’t think you will really understand them until you actually use it in a practical way. This experience was intellectually insane for me, I wanted to know more and also get my hands in the code.

This is what Le Wagon teaches you, a practical approach to build stuff, from the idea to its launch, as well as an overwhelming web knowledge.

The overall experience is life-changing. I was part of the Batch#48 in Paris, not only that Le Wagon team is inspiring, welcoming and knowledgeable, you also learn to code with dynamic and motivated classmates, people who are truly dedicated to learn which makes the bootcamp truly enjoyable.

I would recommend it anytime.

The school in Barcelona is located in a co-working space near La Sagrada Familia, it has a good kitchen, balcony, supermarket below and restaurants nearby. The classroom itself is like a small lecturing room in the corner of one of the co-working floors and you can break out to the co-working desks (if available) to do the day's work.

The buddy learning system (assigned a different coding buddy each day) in the early weeks really helps you with both learning the material and getting to know your classmates. Le Wagon also has a great support ticket system as well. Overall, I found the infrastructure and implementation of Le Wagon's course work to be super student friendly.

There are different teachers for different components of the course, for our batch they were often seconded from other Le Wagon bootcamps or are freelancers, so didn't necessarily have teaching experience. Therefore some teachers were markedly better than others when it comes to both lecturing and troubleshooting. That being said, Barcelona is a new location and the teachers seem to change with each batch, and you can also watch video lectures from the Paris bootcamp in French or English if you need to.

By week 9 though, you've gone from knowing nothing about code to building an fully functional app with a couple of your peers, experiencing a new city and making a ton of international friends along the way - for me that was an exhilterating and rewarding experience, as the title says, it still feels like a dream.

Final verdict: the coursework was excellent, my classmates rocked, Barcelona is an amazing city, but for the money paid, the standard of teaching staff could have been higher.

I’ve graduated from Le Wagon batch #18, about 4 months ago. I am 30-year-old and I have been working intensively for the past 6 years. I felt a bit nervous about getting back to a classroom into an intense learning situation for 9 weeks straight. I had read and heard a lot about the intensity of the program and how demanding it would be. I had never been the best at school and I didn’t have any engineering background. In a nutshell, I didn’t felt like I had the best profile and I was feeling anxious. Despite all, I consider that graduating from the Le Wagon was the best thing that happened to me for a real long time. Here is why…

 

Getting back to learning mode and building a new skill

Once you graduate from university how often will you get a chance to dedicate yourself 100% at learning a new skill for 2 months straight? And yet, isn’t the XXIst century economy all about adaptability, continuous learning and building fresh skills?

Of course, each day at work brings its shares of learning in some sense. But putting your career on hold for a couple of months and dedicating yourself to something really new has the ability to reconnect with the incredible power of learning. By breaking up my routine, I quickly felt excited again by discovering new stuff and I wanted to share this excitement around me. It really reminded me that we should always keep a fresh mindset and we should always aim for the step learning curve.

Sheryl Sandberg once said “Build your skills, not your resume”. Well that is exactly what Le Wagon is all about.

 

Getting a 360 overview

How often do you learn to build a project from beginning to end all on your own? Professionally, I knew a lot of things before joining Le Wagon but I have never been competent enough in a specific field so that I could do it all by myself. In that sense, the full stack program, which goes through back end, front end and infrastructure topics, gives you an incredible feeling of freedom and independence.

On top of it, even if you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve next, or which job opportunity you are aiming at, I would strongly advise to go for a full stack / generalist bootcamp program. Coding is such a long run that, for me, it doesn’t make any sense to focus right away. You have the rest of your programing life to focus, so why rushing?

 

Finally, here are the 2 most common questions I get when people ask me about Le Wagon.

Do I need to have a clear project in mind in order to be efficient?  

Absolutely not. In fact, I would think the opposite. People who showed up with an extremely specific project in mind tend to only see classes through this particular prism and might miss some things. Coming with no project enables you to get there with a free mind and get the best out of each and every classes.  

 

Where do I stand when I finish Le Wagon?

Learning ruby is just like learning any spoken language: there is the theoretical part and the practice. I remember learning Portuguese listening to podcasts in the bus for months. When I got to Brazil, I had never spoken with anyone and hence no one understood a single word I was saying. I believe it would be the same for ruby.

Le Wagon makes sure that you have all the theory right and give you basis of practice. Some within the class pick up much faster than others but ultimately, the only thing that matter is what are you going within the next 6 to 12 months. Ultimately, I see coding a bit like poker: it takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. You will realize very quickly that it is impossible to learn all the coding tricks within 2 months but Le Wagon will guide you on how to find these tricks for the rest of your life. 

I graduated from Le Wagon in May 2015 in Paris, and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone with even the most remote interest in coding.

I recently attended a Q&A with DHH (creator of Ruby on Rails, the web framework taught at Le Wagon), where he said:

“Learn to code. If not to be a coder, then to understand the world.”

Le Wagon is the perfect doorway to begin that journey.

My Background

After an amazing learning experience in high school, I was less than enthused with my university experience (liberal arts). So I quit after my BA and took a job at a big company. 4 years later, I grew tired of the corporate culture and handed in my resignation to do Le Wagon.

The Bootcamp

All I wanted from the bootcamp was learning to code. But what I got from the bootcamp was much more:

• the Program: the program is excellently designed, both in pace and content. I really liked the no-nonsense approach to the material and the intensity was high but appropriate.
• the Team: the team behind the program is a rare combination of technical and human skills.
• the Network: with over 500 current alumnis and counting, the program keeps on giving beyond the 9 weeks it lasts. Whether you’re looking for a job or have a technical hiccup you need help with, the network has your back. Across 12 cities in 8 different countries.
• the Culture: learning code is one thing. But the human experience is a huge factor for me, especially under intense working conditions.. And that was my favorite thing from Le Wagon: the optimism that permeated everything about the program. You leave not only with an arsenal of new tech skills, but with a new mindset. The mindset of someone who doesn’t stop until something is working exactly like you intended. The mindset of a coder, of an entrepreneur, of a “Wagoneer”.

Le Wagon is the best educational experience I’ve ever had, and I will always look back at those 9 weeks as defining both personally and for my career.

After 7 years as VP Sales in a startup, it was time for me to have fun with code.

I was clearly determined to become a web developer.

At start, I tried hard to learn by myself with online courses, but It was really hard to link all these elements. I was able to create simple algorithms, but how to store it ? how to create a simple interface for web users ? how to share an URL to target my users ? At start, Internet is a mess !...

My luck was, a good CTO friend told me he just hired a young ‘graduated’ developer from Le Wagon and it was a good surprise for him and for his team. That was such an argument so after passing tests, I started to learn how to code with Le Wagon during the winter 2018. I really loved this experience working with other students with the same will to succeed in coding. Program and teachers are well-honed and after 9 weeks I was the first surprised by all the things I was able to accomplish.

After Le Wagon I practiced as a freelancer for small projects and since septembre 2018, I’m now CTO in a young company and I am having a lot of fun coding every day..

I have always been fascinated by great tech products and have always had plenty of ideas on how to make them better or come up with radically new ones. However, I always lacked the technical skills to make my ideas reality.

I did LeWagon to overcome this situation but would never have believed that I would actually learn this much. The LeWagon curriculum is incredibly well organized and just perfect for absolute coding beginners. The 9 weeks are intense but it's a super fun experience and the teachers are great. It really is a community and you can feel that the teachers are passionate about coding and want you to learn the skill.

Although, I am not working in a technical position strictly speaking, my technical skills help me in my day to day job. As a Business Developer I have to understand our product (Payment API) really well and I am currently working on a prototype to test a new use case for our product. Moreover, I am still working on a coding side project. 

In short, once you do the LeWagon Bootcamp you will never want to stop coding. I have recommended 3 friends to LeWagon since I left, which pretty much says it all