Le Wagon

I started confident that LW would make me at least understand code.. as the bootcamp was going on, beside a great human adventure (9 weeks facing code challenges, with other « poor » volunteers, just like me), I discovered LW was even able to teach us more: how to code on our own!

LW just figured out how to store encyclopaedias in our heads.. To be honest, I had serious doubts about my ability to learn so much.. but guess what.. we always can learn and LW knows how to make it happen!

Few words about LW Barcelona in particular.. LW processes and teaching techniques are perfectly organised.. but.. what makes a huge difference, what makes us all (students) keep motivated and never giving up.. are people working in there (from general manager to most junior teacher).. they just keep motivating us, treating us like with a lot of attention.. and patience. I feel like they were here to make us feel good, happy, focused and part of the LW community.

I’ll conclude adding that LW was the best experience I ever had. I encourage any one reading those lines.. to read more feedbacks.. and just jump into it!

During LW bootcamp, I red this on the Google Chrome daily momentum : « Live as if you were to die tomorrow »… (this we know.. but what comes next)…« Learn as if you were to live forever. » - Mahatma Gandhi

Cheers / Abrazo!

Prior to joining le Wagon, I had worked in 3 SaaS startups. As Sales Manager, MD and CEO. 
I always felt like my lack of technical knowledge was costing me a lot: 
- I had no idea of what were the technical implications of client requests (so they had to wait for me to check with the tech team)
- I couldn't appreciate properly the work of the tech team
- I wasn't aware of what was possible or not.

So after quite some time looking online, I selected Le Wagon. I didn't regret it at all: the tool and the methodology are just freaking awesome.
I don't think I've absorb so much knowledge in such a short period of time! 
I also really enjoyed that they select candidates so that I was surrounded by very cool people! 
Today, I am actually working on a company project with 2 of my former classmates.

Thank you le Wagon!

"Ideas are easy, execution is what matters!” and this is where Le Wagon jumps-in. We all have business ideas but few of us bring them into life. Some of us are too risk-averse, while others do not know “how to” or miss the skills to bootstrap their projects. I guarantee that the bootcamps will help you remove these roadblocks between your ideas and what could be your future venture.

After business school, I worked for an international management consulting company for more than 2 years and was given the opportunity to take a leave to do “something different”. I had always been interested in computer science and wanted to gain the skills to develop my own business prototypes in the future. Therefore, I embarked on the journey and pushed this hidden door with a red kombi van logo on it.

From day one you get totally immersed: the format is very demanding with 10+ hours of code every day but extremely well structured so that you continuously keep yourself focused and challenged. Lectures in the morning, katanas and coding challenges with your buddy during the day, live code to finish, without forgetting your daily homework. It will burn your brain but you will like it. Most importantly you realise how steep is your learning curve.

The quality of the program is very impressive and its content is thoughtfully improved between every batch. Nowhere else you will find so much commitment to the quality of the teaching experience. Teachers and assistants are not only very strong technically and dedicated, they literally live through the program as much as we do as students: from your first steps with ruby algorithms to the deployment of your rails applications you continually feel pushed and motivated. As a result, you will develop strong fundamentals to become a full-stack developer and learn to gain the skills you need for your projects.

However, on top of the solid technical skills you will build, the main value added of the bootcamp lies in the people you meet and the amazing community of alumni you join: this is priceless. Within your batch you will meet people with different backgrounds sharing the same motivation for learning to code and chasing their aspiration. You might find the ideal co-founder there! The resulting atmosphere consists in an incredible experience which you will remember for a long time.

In a nutshell, I strongly recommend Le Wagon to anyone who wants to jump into programming and learn the technical foundations to build web applications. Personally, the program brought me the skills to bootstrap a first project in data analytics and then, led me to launch SteerIO, a new project health analytics company leveraging collective intelligence and AI to boost project success rates and support organisations in their transformation journeys (more info on https://www.steerio.co/?src=coursereport).
What about you?

I started my career as a trader in a bank but I always wanted to create my own business. When I had the opportunity to really launch my project I spent a lot of time finding my co-founder and web development skills to build my tech product. 
As a trader I know pretty well that time is money and I was then facing a situation where our product would have been built in several months and that it would have cost a lot to have it ready. I decided to stop the venture and learn to code in order to be able to build my idea from scratch. I wanted something efficient, so I short listed few bootcamps and contacted alumnis and read reviews. I had this interview with Edouard in their office and I was really seduced by the 9 weeks program and the atmosphere. This period was really important for me as I met people from many different horizons and it has represented the beginning of my new venture. I met my new co-founder at le wagon and now we have created our startup where we are launching the first price negotiator robot in the sharing economy. We have been able to code our bot from scratch in Ruby within messenger interface (m.me/helloearnest) and now we are coding a B2B web version.
And thanks to the 3000+ le wagon alumni’s we are able to make partnerships with big names in our field.

With friends we had many ideas of web-based company that we wanted to create but I never had the skills to test them. So I read information about different bootcamps in France.
After going to several demodays where I was surprised by the MVP’s quality that were showcased, I decided to register for their 9-week program.

In the first days, we are warned that the training is intensive and it’s true ! We feel that the training is iterative and that Le Wagon improves its courses between each batch.
I really liked the emulation between students. Everyone is caring and shares his knowledge. We all have the same passion : web, startups, technology, entrepreneurship but everyone has different backgrounds: one was a policeman before, others engineers, designers...

In summary, this bootcamp allowed me to understand the web, how it works. It gave me some technical skills. It also brought me the pride of being able to develop the call-of-dirty project with 2 other alumni.

My name is Remi and I just graduated from HEC, a business school in Paris. I'm currently launching a startup in the business travel space, and Le Wagon has been one of the most mind-blowing events in my life.

I joined Le Wagon 2 years ago, during my gap year. After internships at a Rocket Internet startup and a VC, I felt I really wanted to create my own company. But I felt incapable of building anything with my own hands. Some of my friends had joined Le Wagon, and had told me a lot about it.

I was the youngest guy of my batch (21 y/o at that time), but I felt welcome since day 1. I made friends with amazing people that were twice my age, and others that had completely different backgrounds. I enjoyed so much the unique peer-to-peer / learning-by-doing pedagogy I felt I had never learned anything so fast.

Following Le Wagon, I became a freelance developer for a few months, and I got back to school. I never stopped coding, and I built the first version of our startup's product. I still hang out with friends I met at Le Wagon, and the community has been of great help when I was lost in my code :)

I joined Le Wagon’s coding bootcamp in Paris to get real about learning the fundamentals of web development. Before that, I had been through dozens of online courses but I never really knew where to start so I just stagnated after a while. I knew I needed to change something if I wanted to make real progress.

That’s when I came across Le Wagon and it’s bootcamp format. With Le Wagon, you go back to school for 9 weeks and learn web development the same way you used to learn other stuff back in the days: by giving it your full and uninterrupted attention, surrounded by teachers and other students.

What I really love about Le Wagon’s coding bootcamp is that it’s designed to be comprehensive from the get go. No more a la carte, you’re on for the full menu. No need to pick random languages or difficulty levels. Those decisions have been made for you, which means that you can focus on what really matters.

After completing Le Wagon’s full stack program, I now understand the grammar of web development and I feel like I can pick online courses or books with more confidence to keep making progress on my own. It’s a great feeling.

Before Le Wagon, I had just finished a business degree in University. I liked it but I wasn’t too happy to go to a mega corporation and read excel sheets for 8 hours a day or work myself to sleep in a consulting company (nothing’s wrong with it if it’s your vibe).

I was really scared that coming from a business background and not knowing anything about code I wouldn’t keep up! The thing is that most of my group came from different backgrounds and places and had complete opposite experiences from me! Not only did that leave me at ease about my lack of knowledge in the matter but it created the amazing environment that is Le Wagon! 

The 9 weeks were very hard but so rewarding. It’s was constant shift between feeling on top of the world and feeling like you truly have no idea of what’s happening. The truth is that none of us gave up and I ended up presenting an amazing project - not bias at all :)

Now that I finished, I want to learn more and find a job as a junior developer. I feel like the course has given me more than enough skills to do so.

100% recommend it to anyone!

I learned more applicable skills in 9 weeks than I did in four full years of university (and I learned a lot in university!)

I took a pause from a career in investment banking and traveled from California to London just to attend Le Wagon as I had heard of the schools stellar reputation, and I was not disappointed. I didn’t know anyone in the country, and had no idea how to code (I actually thought CSS stood for Computer Science Something, whoops), so of course the process was a bit intimidating. Thankfully, the folks at Le Wagon seriously know how to run the camp to eliminate that anxiety from week one. Nobody here has an ego, and I think that culture is driven top down from management and the teachers, as well as in their selection process. Every single person was friendly, approachable, and helpful. Everyone wants to learn and progress together, and it makes for a really special time.

A word of advice: You will feel stupid. You will feel incompetent. You will DEFINITELY doubt whether or not you’ve got what it takes to code. That’s normal — and it’s all part of the process :slightly_smiling_face: By the end of the camp (especially in the last two weeks) you’ll be slinging apps left and right.

Le Wagon will always hold a very special place in my heart. I’ve made some great friends here, and know I have a place where I belong across the pond. Shout out to Batch 143!!!!

Before Le Wagon I had a stable job that I liked, but I didn't love. I needed a change, something that pushed me forward to a better and happier future. And that's when I found Le Wagon.

I'm not going to lie or sugar coat it. Those 9 weeks were the most intense weeks of my life so far. I had opposite feelings throughout (sometimes at the same time): I loved it and I hated it, I felt really smart and really dumb, I wanted to hug the teachers and punch them. On the first day, Shannon said 'you just gotta keep going and trust the process' and that's what I did. And it was painful. And I survived. Not only I survived, I had 2 prototypes done and was as proud of them as a mother is proud of her children. They were my babies, they were the result of 9 weeks of hard work, and I couldn't be happier.

I learned a lot and I made new friends, there was time to be serious and time to have fun (Cocktail Thursday!), and I ended up with a whole new set of skills. Now I have a new door open and a new future for me to explore.

Le Wagon is a great way to transition into tech as an entrepreneur. I am a former finance professional who has run my own business since 2009. I am excited by the changes in technology and want to transition my business towards using more technology.

As a business owner I considered it essential that I had the ability to control and understand the code my business utilises, which meant I needed to learn to code.

Le Wagon’s programme exceeded all my expectations. In the nine weeks we learnt full stack web-development and the final fortnight involved writing our own project.

Le Wagon combines an enthusiastic staff and a world class teaching platform to deliver knowledge. Best of all we retain access to our lectures and notes on the platform after the programme and I am already reaching out to the vast alumni network to help me with problems. It is very difficult to change career or direction, but Le Wagon’s programme is one of the best ways to do it.

After graduating with a liberal arts degree in 2015, I began working in an operations role at a financial services firm. I quickly realized my curiosity was not satiated by the work and moved into an application development team as a business analyst. This role brought me close enough to product development to know that this is an area I'd like to continue my career in, but I was missing the technical knowledge needed to properly engage.

I joined Le Wagon to gain a deeper technical skill set before beginning an MBA at MIT this fall. Taking this knowledge with me to business school will allow me to achieve 3 of my goals: 1) Meaningfully engage in the start-up community at b-school and have the skills to bring my ideas to life; 2) credibly pursue technical Product Management roles in the tech space for summer internships and full-time employment post-graduation; 3) relying on my foundational understanding of programming, take further courses at MIT and learn other languages such as python and R (I'm also interested in data analytics).

Having completed the 9 weeks, I can’t speak highly enough of the instructors, the environment they create or the quality of the coursework. 

Coding was the first time I’d felt such highs as I did when I’d finally coded my way through a tough problem, or such lows as getting stuck on something that seemed like it should be easy. What made my Le Wagon experience so valuable, was that when I hit the lows, I could always turn to the buddy I was paired with for that day or call over one of the many teachers and tutors available, to help talk me through it. If I had been studying alone, those moments would have brought my progress to a halt. 

Getting a dev job at the end of the course was not a selection criterion for me and I was therefore surprised to realize in the last few weeks, just how prepared I was to take that next step into a junior dev role, or to work on one of the freelance projects a fellow Le Wagon Alumni had taken on and was looking for help with. I have no doubt that I would have been able to get a job and found it rather regretful that I wouldn’t be able to continue learning in that manner for another year or two. 

It’s not possible to learn everything about anything in 9 weeks, but the Le Wagon approach did set me up to continue to learn and successfully figure things out on my own. I’m taking full advantage of continued access to all the resources I had as a student as I continue working on my group project and a personal project I’ve started.