Le Wagon

The Le Wagon bootcamp is a very intensive experience.

If you like being challenged and solving problems, you will absolutely love it.

Le Wagon's way of teaching content is very different from schools/universities in a really good way. They take a hands-on approach, focusing on less hours of teorical knowledge and more hours of practical challenges. Expect to spend 90% of the time coding.
You must be aware that for you to take the most of this bootcamp, you must be fully commited to it. You shouldn't plan to work during the bootcamp. It's a fulltime course.

This was my average daily schedule during the bootcamp:

07:40H - Wake Up
09:00H - Morning Lecture
11:00H - Its challenge time! Start doing the daily challenges with your designated pair of the day.
12:30H - Lunch
13:00H - Keep working on the challenges. If you manage to finish the mandatory ones, start doing the optional (The difficulty increases for each optional challenge. Its hard and very fun).
17:00H - Live code - A special challenge of the day, coded by the entire class together.
18:30H- End of the day. Le Wagon stays open until 23h. Some students go home, some students keep doing challenges. In my case, i stayed everyday until 23h, doing the extra challenges and studying.
23:00H - Time to home and rest.

It is very demanding and very very rewarding. You will learn a lot, meet many interesting people from different backgrounds and develop a full project in the end along with teammates. If you are considering applying, go ahead and do it. It was the best learning experience of my life.
 

I’ve been founding and managing businesses in various industries gathering insights from different parts of the business and yet, it seemed like something was missing. Every time my partners and I attempted to scale a business we got stuck as either no one in our team had sufficient technical skills to develop what we needed or it was too expensive to be outsourced.

So I decided this will not stop me again in the future. I will quit my job, learn to code and become the successful entrepreneur I always wanted to be. Easier said than done… I did tons of research and finally came across Le Wagon's intense full stack web development bootcamp. I was hooked as soon as I saw the program: OOP, Ruby (fastest growing development community), Rails, HTML, CSS, JS, Ajax, API’s, DB (SQL, My SQL, PostGres), developing environments and collaboration tools (Git & Github, Trello, Slack) and deployment (Heroku)… It looked insanely complete.

Then I came across SwitchUp, and Le Wagon’s top score of 4.99 out of 5 (+600 reviews!!). Could this get any better? It did, I found out that they are in Bali. A week later I was already signed up and preparing for what I thought will be one of the greatest experience of my life. Some expectations, huh? I was part of Le Wagon Batch #163 in Bali and believe it or not it totally surpassed my expectations. Not only the program is as strong as they claim, teachers, fellow students (we were 25!) and manager were so incredibly nice and helpful which made my experience so much more rewarding.

And you not only learn, you make! During the last weeks my team and I developed The Pool of Printables (www.thepoolofprintables.com), a platform that allows you to collectively raise money to get high quality 3D designs and boost the 3D printing community. We felt so proud making and presenting it on the final demo day!

Bottom line, if your goal is similar to mine, to understand more about coding to boost your entrepreneurial and/ or managing skills and be able to code MVP’s, or if you aim to become a full stack developer, Le Wagon is the place for you. I loved the experience and I can’t recommend it enough.

P.S.: the access to the Le Wagon community that you have during and after the bootcamp might be the biggest resource you don't have on your radar while looking for bootcamps. More than 3000 like-mined people helping with developments, finding jobs, freelance gigs, team-mates, co-founders… BOOM.

Over the years, I’ve worked as the business or marketing guy for various companies. I was always drawn to these roles because of my ability to ‘play nice’ with others. But in some ways I was also limited to these roles because I lacked a strong technical skillset. In my mind, this technical skillset could be many things… coding, design, data science, architecture, medicine, and law are all examples. Unfortunately for me, I had never developed any of these skills. I wanted to find a way to develop myself so that I could provide more value to companies while also freeing myself from the business/marketing mindset. I didn’t want to just sell, I wanted to build. After nine weeks of intensive learning with Le Wagon, I’ve not only gained a deeper understanding of full-stack web development, but the confidence and knowhow to extend my learning to other technical areas. Although the bootcamp has ended, the learning has just begun. I’ve begun work at a local startup as a WeChat Mini Program developer, I’ve joined forces with other Le Wagon alumni to continue learning new frameworks, and I’ve built a strong community of developers, hackers, and entrepreneurs who want to use to tech to add value to the world. Choosing to join Le Wagon was a great decision. It has reshaped the way I see the world and my role in it.

Before coming to Le Wagon I had a start-up. The things were going great until the day when I realised that it was actually the time to build the product.  I didn’t have the skills to build it. Moreover, I thought that programming is like an art - only the gifted people could do it and excel at it. After a couple of months of unfruitful searches for a technical co-founder or even a person who would help me out without asking for a fortune, I started considering learning how to code myself. I was terrified, I was unsure but I made the decision. I went to Google and searched for «the best coding school in Europe», and Le Wagon popped up immediately. I read a few recommendations and reviews and it became a no-brainer to me. 
The program is very intense, yet extremely rewarding. The feelings you get when your code works are very genuine, I’d compare it to the emotions of kids who build something really cool with Lego and are super satisfied with their work. The classes were extremely fun and I really enjoyed the idea of working with a new buddy every day. Not to forget the teaching staff: the guys have an insane amount of patience to be there for you and explain a very minor detail until you *really* get it, which is invaluable. After all, Le Wagon is one big family.
Of course, there were tough things. When I first saw «9 Intensive Weeks» on the website I couldn’t imagine how really intensive they are. You spend 9 hours a day learning how to code, making thousands of mistakes, asking for help. However, these 9 weeks have been one of the best weeks of my life, and I can really say that I have pushed my own boundaries. I may sound like a cliché but it is true: I couldn’t imagine myself being able to do things I can do now. It truly is amazing and fulfilling. 

One thing that I also want to mention is that coding changes the way you think and the way you dream. Before going to Le Wagon, I couldn’t think of building a complex, technical product that has hi-tech features. Now, after the immersion into the tech culture, it is really inspiring to dream even bigger and aim for something that would change the world.

If you are considering joining Le Wagon, don’t think too much - it will change your life, just like it changed mine.
Everybody can code, it «simply» takes desire, effort, an open-mind and people that would support you. So why not doing it with the best school?
Change your life - Learn how to code

Before Le Wagon I was a postdoctoral researcher in science. Seeing the growing field of technology and startups and the simultaneously rising demand for developers, I decided to join the Le Wagon Bootcamp. Before Le Wagon I already had basic experience in programming and therefore I was having doubts if the Bootcamp might not be demanding enough. However, I was challenged from the beginning to the end and it was hard work to prepare the lectures and get the exercises done.

That said, there is no problem to get successfully through the Bootcamp and deliver great final projects without any prior programming knowledge. This works because the Le Wagon curriculum and teachers adjust very well to the different pre-knowledge of the students. The program is well structured and all programming fundamentals are taught before going into the development of web applications.

Most importantly the whole Le Wagon team of teachers and assistants spent a great effort on helping the students and make it a great experience for everybody.
Le Wagon prepares the students to work as a developer alone or in a team. I recommend Le Wagon to anybody, who wants to change their career, independently of the professional background.

A year ago I finished my training at Le Wagon (batch 83). I was looking for a web developer training to learn to code, use APIs, learn to scrape the web, to become a growth hacker. I also wanted to be autonomous and create side projects and why not create a startup one day. There are a lot of bootcamps to learn to code in Paris so I compared them and I chose Le Wagon for several reasons:
- It is a reference training in the startup ecosystem.
- For their “product” culture
- For the network. I have built a network of trusted relationships today thanks to the bootcamp.

I was hired as a growth hacker at the end of the batch in a startup accelerator. I was able to practice my skills. A few months after Le Wagon, I continued coding and I created a tool. I launched my own marketing automation tool through what I learned ( www.tribly.co ). The bootcamp has a cost, but it is an investment to do in oneself which is worth it and which is quickly profitable.

I have been living in Japan for 5 years working as an English teacher but teaching myself coding on the side. I tried to switch careers multiple times with no luck until I found Le Wagon in Tokyo. 

Teachers are amazing. The program is hands-on with lectures and then building on what you learn through challenges and small projects throughout the day. The teachers take you through the concepts step by step. There are TAs (and the teachers) that help with the day's challenges if you need it. I was an incredible experience and I almost didn't want it to end.

Now, I'm a full-stack developer for a startup in Tokyo. I've built life-long friends through the program and have finally realized my dream to code professional all thanks to Le Wagon!

Le Wagon changed my life completely.
Honestly I couldn’t code really well, but this bootcamp tough me how I can manage my life if I really want which anyone didn’t teach me in the school and in my work. Actually it was more important than just only coding. To decide attending the bootcamp wasn’t really easy for me because I had good career and salary in Tokyo. But I just realised sometime we need to decide and make big change in our life otherwise our life will be same level and never learn anything. Now I have more independent mind set and I can manage my life by my self!

After working for a start-up for a couple of years I felt it was time for a change and I wanted to challenge myself by learning something completely new. I love travelling and to have flexibility in a job, so why not learn how to code? I didn’t have any experience in tech or coding at all and after hearing all the great things about Le Wagon Bali, I decided to quit my job and jump in with both feet to become a full stack web developer.

I got straight into the deep end and in the first few weeks I got to learn, amongst other things, Ruby, SQL and OOP which started coming together when we learnt the Rails framework. Not having any prior experience, I was afraid that I would end up thinking coding was too technical for me, or that I would not be good at it. By the time it got to the project weeks of the Bootcamp, I was really impressed with myself for being able to code real web-apps. Before the bootcamp I never imagined this possible.

After two weeks of non-stop coding for our project SkillSwap, we were able to finish on time and present it on Demo Day to the local teach community and digital nomads (watch the videoclip!). This is the feature I like the most about Le Wagon. It is very product-oriented and I believe it is quite unique in that sense. Not only can you be a junior developer when you graduate, you are also trained to be an entrepreneur and product owner to pitch a product, manage product design and project constraints, conduct business presentations, with the aim of launching your idea to the market. The feeling is incredibly rewarding and empowering.

I never imagined I would like coding this much and so will you.