Le Wagon

Le Wagon FullStack program that I attended last summer was a unique experience for three reasons :

- First because of its very ambitious developer training scope : one doesn’t learn how to use already made coding tools, that could get obsolete quickly, but rather the logic behind them in a thorough bottom’s up approach (just look at the training programme, it speaks for itself). And still, all levels of developers make their way through the intense formation, from the absolute beginner to the somehow initiated and already keen developer. And it applies to you whether you want to become a developer, a product owner, an entrepreneur, etc.

- Second because the formation has a very smart “hands on” approach following the “learn by doing” principle. A short and sweet lecture session every morning - for approximately an hour and half - and then, code, code, code....  And because everyone works in pairs and is also supported by a great team of knowledgeable Teaching Assistants, you are never alone in front of your screen.

- Third, a business and project oriented approach : because Le Wagon founders don’t want you to think just code, but also business : who is your customer? What problem do you solve? What is your unique value proposition? How do you design it and prototype you web application? And then, how do you code it all up as a team? And when you think you are almost done, you have to present it to the world during demo day! There are some great examples of demo days on the web, watch them, they are real!

I received great feedback about Le Wagon before attending the bootcamp and knew it corresponded to what I was looking for. So I jumped into it. And it turned out to be even better than I anticipated.

Get ready for an intense session, this is not just a walk in the park, it requires your full attention. And in the end, you will be so pleased with Le Wagon experience and you will have met some great people along the way.

Happy coding journey !

12 month before starting le Wagon Bali in Jan 2019, I was running a promising start-up that just raised 300 K€ seed fund, team of 5 full time people, great investors and located in the largest European start up hub in Paris, Station F. We had just launched a marketplace of craftmen and craftwoman in fashion, mainly focused on dressmakers. KPI were looking good and before launching we already had hundreds of dressmakers, interest from customers, to make it short we had our first traction. From a tech side I had no knowledge in tech and after a quick benchmark on the French market we decided to choose an agency based in Lyon that develops “The only all-in-one solution for creating your marketplace” (as they call themselves) and pay annual fees to use there “easy to use” marketplace solution… no need to say that was the worst idea I ever had.

The worst decision I ever made

Not only this solution was very expensive (40K€ / year), but also It would take us a week (in the best case) or two to have a button moved (basic CSS and HMTL, now I know J ). When you are launching a new tech business, the first thing you learn from every entrepreneur book is the fact you have to iterate every single day according to user feedback. Well, we had it all, Trello feedback loop, public roadmap, users/dressmakers regular test, full time internal product owner… but the so called “web agency” was facing a peak of work at that moment and would take care of our requests in the best case after 10 days which is an eternity at start-up scale. We were not even asking new features, no back-end, but basics front-end. But worse we had not opportunity to change any back-end function at all. We finally had to pay freelance developers to at least improve User Interface and do the work quicker, which started to cost a lot of money to us. After 9 months like that we eventually ran out of money and could not afford a second year of annual fees (and we didn’t want to carry on with them anyway). The traction was not going fast enough to raise a second round of seed money, technology was not even ours, so we didn’t even have anything to sell. We decided to kill the project. In September 2018, I was by myself no more team, deeply in depth with banks (BPI), my associate had left the business and I was about to close the business.

When I decided to join Le Wagon.

After couple of weeks of back and forth I finally decided to maintain the business by myself, doing some marketing freelance to make money and made the decision to join le Wagon for the January batch. I thought, as I failed my project due to my lack of knowledge in technology I should do something about it. What was the learning I could get from this experience? The answer was definitely making my main 2018 drawback, a 2019 strength by learning how to code asap. A coding boothcamp was the answer ! I already had friends that had been through Le Wagon and just loved the experience, choosing Le Wagon was a no brainer. However I was not making enough money to join le Wagon Paris and live in Paris for two months without freelancing at all. This is when I decided to pick the most exciting AND cheapest cost of life destination where Le Wagon had a campus… BALI, Indonesia.

I had buried my project already.

I was not proud about the project I failed, I felt guilty and I kept thinking I could have done better… I had wasted so much money. It was difficult for me to get over it and even though I kept telling myself failure makes success, being raised in French culture where failure is not really valued it was not easy. Not because of people or friends who were very supportive, but just me…

Honestly running away from Paris and learning code in Bali was some kind of escape, but I really wanted to gain knowledge on how people do business in other cultures. Being in Paris, at Station F at the heart of the French entrepreneurship was great but I wanted to learn from other entrepreneurs outside Paris and outside France. I didn’t really knew what I could expect but I didn’t want to hear about marketplaces and dressmakers anymore.

2019, new year new challenges!

I finally made it to Le Wagon Bali and I had the chance to be part of such a crazy team of Le Wagon Batch #217 with whom I almost spent 24/7 during 2 month. 18 people (teachers included) coming from all over the world (Brazil, UK, Ireland, Korea, Indonesia, USA, Italia, India, France, Thailand, Germany). Everyone had such a great story to share and such a great experience I could learn from. I felt blessed to be in the middle of such a diverse melting pot. During the boothcamp I finally had the great pleasure the re-code from scratch that project I failed last year thanks to an amazing international team (Korea, Ireland and UK) who really believed in this project. We even presented it during our demoday. A month after the end of the boothcamp we are now about to test it in Korea, Japan, UK and South America.

Not only the Le Wagon Bali brought me knowledge on how to code my marketplace my-self but I also had the opportunity to share 2 month of my life in an intensive yet immersive experience. This great team of international people really helped me getting over my recent episode turning it into a strength. Not sure about the outcome of my project yet, but it doesn’t really matter. That was the best therapy and the best entrepreneurial lesson I ever had.

I joined Le Wagon in pursuit of a long term goal: to become a developer. I’d spent time trying to complete online tutorials with varied success. I then spent nine weeks immersed in a fun environment, with peers on the same journey as me, supported by some of the best tutors I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I learned more than I thought I could.

Le Wagon isn’t just about teaching you to code. The curriculum is rounded as such that what you learn is totally applicable to anyone who wants to work in product development. It provides you with the knowledge and resources to be able to create awesome digital products whether that be pitching, design, user experience and more.

Le Wagon is a big commitment. For me it was a big step to leave a job to go back into education but my advice is just do it, and the sooner the better! The bootcamp is not easy, but it’s so rewarding.

I leave Le Wagon able to pursue a career as a developer, with a new set of friends with whom I’ve shared an incredible journey and a community of developers to call upon for support. I say leave, Le Wagon’s never really over, I’ll be seeing everyone for beers this Friday ;)

My name is Patrick, I studied entrepreneurship and I’m now pursuing my entire career in freelance.
I work happily as a Product Owner, Product Manager or Change Management consultant.

I had been in a tech environment for a while now, from which I was missing the codes (no pun intended!). The more I dove into technical projects and the more I became frustrated not being able to access the code and fix minor bugs myself. Moreover, in order to write and document issues for the developers, I spent a lot of time reading and listening to technical stuff that I didn’t understand fully. Common sense can only bring you so far, sooner or later you end up saying something stupid to a developer’s ears and wasting everyone’s time.

I knew I could find all I wanted to learn online, however those links had been sitting in my favs for a while and deep down I knew I would never get to it. I needed someone to kick my ass into learning to code. That’s why I chose Le Wagon.

The most important thing Le Wagon brought me was inner peace: since the training I feel a lot more legitimate and I can gain the developers’ trust more easily because we have some common grounds.

I am very satisfied with the training. Le Wagon gave me a good technical background that allows me to participate in software architecture decisions, access and search the database, facilitate bug tracking and most preciously understand developers’ work with all its inherent frustration, pain and joy.

Before joining Le Wagon bootcamp I had tried many things studing medecin, then dentistry, and ended up in a business school. I quit each time. After this, I spent six months doing almost nothing apart from thinking of what I could do, what work I could love doing in the future, that brought me to candidate to Le Wagon.

After the first day of bootcamp, I knew coding would be a source of joy for me and I was sure I made the right choice. During the 9 weeks of the bootcamp, I met amazing people who I will keep in touch with and developed tremendous coding skills relative to the time I spent learning (I’d never written a single line of code before). The whole bootcamp has been an amazing experience, and a game changer for my future.

I’m currently continuing work on the final project we pitched and developed during the last 10 days of the bootcamp. Whether it works, or it fails, I’ll keep coding and keep learning everything I can about coding. This is my new universe now, I love it, and I’ve been introduced to it in a perfect way with le Wagon!

At the end of my studies in business school, I had as project to become product manager, but I didn't have the skills that allow me to communicate and understand the technical teams. That's why I joined le wagon that seemed to me the best option to achieve this goal. A short training, intense and covering all the concepts necessary to be a good product manager. My choice is quickly proven to be the right one, the methodology makes us quickly rise in competences, the structure of the courses is innovating, and allows everyone to advance to the same level. So these are two months that have not only been a period of training, but also a human adventure that opens doors and mind, where we do not imagine learn as much.

I have done the bootcamp in Paris in 2017 (Batch #100) and those are 9 weeks I'll never forget. I have learned so much about programming, product development and entrepreneurship in 9 weeks. In addition to that le wagon is a really awesome community full of inspiring and welcoming people. Being an alumni is really nice because of all the perks and activities that continue beyond the bootcamp. I would strongly advise anyone seriously interested in programming to enroll in le Wagon's bootcamp. 

Before deciding on Le Wagon Tokyo I had scoured course report and quora for bootcamp recommendations, and procrastinated on which bootcamp to choose for over two years. It's practically impossible to know which bootcamp to go with when they all have 5-start reviews, but let me outline why I was so glad I went with Le Wagon and why it may also be the bootcamp for you.

Simply put, the value they deliver is incredible for the price you pay. At only 9 weeks, you might question whether it's enough time to truly 'master' full-stack development. Well, the truth is you won't master full-stack development whichever bootcamp you take because that takes years and years of working in a real job. If this is what puts you off then don't let it, because you gain everything you need to get going in those 9 weeks. What you learn in the first 6 weeks is enough of an overview of the main areas - server-side programming in ruby, front-end html and css, databases, javascript and ruby on rails - to actually build impressive products. In the 3 final weeks you form teams and build products which is exactly what you need to be doing - not languishing in months of prep work before you actually build anything as other bootcamps might have you doing.

Here it is worth mentioning that the quality of the curriculum is really impressive. Having worked as a teacher for over 10 years, I am used to seeing poorly produced teaching materials, but LWs are totally on point. Each exercise is described well and has tests to check your code works correctly, and there are extensions so you'll always have more to come back to to hone your skills even after you finish the bootcamp, as well as a free course on the popular javascript frontend framework React. There were also teaching assistants on hand for when you and your partner got stuck, and they were always totally capable and helpful.

Now I have to mention the other big thing that sets Le Wagon apart from the competition - they coach you on product design, pitching, and developing a minimum viable product from scratch. I've heard of another popular coding camp on here where the final demo day was a disaster because the products produced were so poorly conceived. This wouldn't happen at Le Wagon because of the continuous feedback they give you on your products, and because they make you pitch your product multiple times before the public demo day so you have a lot of opportunities to refine it.

In my case, I pitched an educational product that I'd wanted to build for ages before I came to the bootcamp, and actually got voted for by my classmates and so was able to build it. The whole thing was an incredible experience of turning what was just an idea in my head, into a concrete and valuable product. Now the bootcamp is over LW are giving me advice about how to continue developing my product and launching it as a start up. There is also a huge community of alumni from past batches and you get automatic membership to slack channels where you can continue to network and get notified of jobs in your city and around the world.

Overall, I was left with an impression of a company with integrity who deeply care about what they are doing, who are not just in it to make a quick buck, and who have become one of the most popular bootcamps in the world because they are offering so much value. I feel like the team in Tokyo of Doug, Sylvain and Paul were particularly awesome, but I'm confident that you'll experience a similar degree of awesomeness wherever you take it.

Final note: I put 'not applicable' for job assitance because job interview coaching and introductions to recruiters are not part of the official program, and could differ based on locaiton. In Tokyo, LW did however give us a ton of help and resources for help with landing our first job including introductions to recruiters, how to write our resume, posts about networking events (post bootcamp also), and one-to-one advice on any job offers we had.

• Buenos Aries is a new location for Le Wagon (first batch in mid 2018)
• The maturity of the Buenos Aries program is there. I would 100% recommend taking Le Wagon in BA or anywhere around the world (My worry was that since BA was such a new location for Le Wagon that it might not have had all the kinks worked out. The truth is that the founders train all instructors so well you can’t go wrong with any of their locations.)
• The lead instructor for this course is Sebastain Sempe who has incredible patience and is a talented teacher. Also a shoutout to Sam Levy the TA who was incredible!)
• The student to teacher ratio is 1 to 4 which worked well. (I never felt like I had to wait long to get help on questions)
• The program is intense (60 hours in class a week, but it's totally doable)
• It’s all in English. You need to be fluent in English to take this program.
• Take the pre work seriously and try and time it so that you finish the pre work right before the program starts (if you start the pre work too early you will forget most of what you learned. The course moves so quickly that any extra work you do before the camp will help make some of the concepts familiar) 
• No bootcamp will make you a coder straight out of the camp. You can reasonably get a job 2 - 6 months out (you will need to practice and work on your own projects)
• This bootcamp focuses on Ruby (Ruby on Rails is the framework, you will also learn CSS, HTML, JavaScript and some SQL) Don’t get to caught up in the debate of wether you should take a bootcamp that focuses on Java Script or Python rather then Ruby. It’s true that Ruby is not as popular as it used to be but it’s probably the easiest langue to learn (also it’s a very powerful, probably the best langue for create MVPs). Coding is already hard as it. Staring in Ruby is a smart thing because of its user friendlies. You can move into less friendly languages after the bootcamp if you like coding.

I took place in #batch 213, Bordeaux, France @ Le Wagon after finding out about it from a friend who had taken part in winter 2018 Paris program. I will never look back on this experience. It has given me so much confidence, inspired me to love learning and hard work, especially within a team, and finally to take ownership for my own progress. I entered the batch as perhaps the least likely to fit the stereotype or profile of a web developer or a coder, I was the youngest and I was the only foreigner (half English and Spanish, but thankfully fluent in French!) This did not stop me from putting myself out there, and I managed to pitch a successful project that we created in the last 2 weeks of the 9-week program. My group of 4 developed 'Concierge At Sea', an app to improve clients' experience renting super yachts, and to facilitate an easier working day for the crew managing their guests' needs. I did not expect to make such genuine friends on this course, and the profile of those who I worked alongside surprised me daily as we were shuffled between buddies. The course is structured, empowering and totally worth every penny. I thoroughly recommend anyone sitting on the fence to take the step and go for this!

https://www.lewagon.com/fr/bordeaux 

Before Le Wagon I was working as a digital marketer. I got bored and decided to do something else. I’ve been interested in computer programming my whole life and so I decided to join Le Wagon. This bootcamp had the best reputation in Paris and in the world so the choice was easy for me.

Joining Le Wagon was one of the best choice I’ve made in my life. It helped me gain technical skills but I also met amazing people. I would recommend it to anyone.

And if you’re afraid that you won’t find a job after it: 2 weeks after the end of my batch I found a job as a Fullstack developer in a brand new startup (and I’m not the only one..) !

 I enjoyed my time at LeWagon, in Tokyo.  I had previous experience in the website design, so the front-end was not hard, but the back-end was hard, especially the first couple of weeks, when it was all Ruby.   But you can ask the teachers and the TAs to get you through the exercises - they are there to help!  I'd think there are at least two in every batch that can be ahead of everyone else because of their skills or their previous backgrounds, but don't get stressed over in completing all the exercises - you don't need to complete all in one day - you can come back to the exercises later.  
Also, one teacher was nice enough to talk to us about it.  If you are strong in front-end, don't stress yourself into being a full-stack developer.  You will have access to exercises even after completing LeWagon.  
If there is one con to talk about, it is the management of the final project, simply because at least in our batch, it was never discussed.  Creating a nice work schedule (two weeks is tough though) would be a plus in completing the final project of Ruby in Rails.