Le Wagon

I wanted to learn coding to get into the tech side of the blockchain industry. I initially tried to learn how to code myself but found that the way I was approaching the task was not bearing much fruit, so I decided to look for a bootcamp where I could quickly learn the skills I needed. Le Wagon consistently came up as the best Bootcamp for coding not just on review websites but also through word of mouth from family and friends.

The most rewarding point in the programm is when you reach the final weeks and get to build up a project from scratch with a team of your choosing. I suddenly found that I could truly build something of value.

Going to Le Wagon was one of the best decisions I made in terms of personal growth. You dont just learn how to code but also how to problem solve in an effiecient manner. 

Having finished the bootcamp a couple of months ago I am now working on a blockchain startup called Way which I would never have thought to have been a possibility back in December.

I decided to take part in Le Wagon in January in Berlin. Why ? Because in my two main professional experiences - 1 year as an entrepreneur and 6 months in a chatbot agency, I’ve been very frustrated not to be able to communicate properly with developers and to build my own projects. Also, in both these experiences, I realized I didn’t want to be limited to sales or marketing roles, and that I would like to be more product-oriented (product manager for example). At that point I’ve had just finished my Master in a French Business School and I didn’t want to spend more years studying ! A 9-week coding bootcamp was for me the best time-to-outcome ratio.  

The program is very well packaged: you first have 20-30 hours of video content before the bootcamp to get comfortable with the main concepts and then you start the 9 weeks with an intensive but still agreeable rhythm. The course is based on the learning-by-doing method (which I consider the best method to learn) : 1 hour and a half of lesson in the morning and then exercises all day ! It finishes with a live code when the students are challenged on new coding exercises. Every morning you learn brand new concepts that you have to apply immediately.The exercises have gradual levels, you will start very simple and then it will get more and more complicated. The teachers know at what level you are and provide really personalised help. The whole program is made for you to improve every day and you have the feeling that you can actually accomplish something pretty quick. The most impressive part is the platform on which you work, it’s super advanced. Every lesson, videos of the lectures, exercices, corrections are available on it and there is a lot !

The projects part in the last three weeks is the best time when you can actually apply what you’ve learned. Plus you will figure out how to get organized as a team, to collaborate on a project and to get it live - which is basically the job of a full-time developer. So at the end of the project weeks, you have a functioning first website and a good idea of what it’s like to be a developer.

Regarding what happens next, I personnaly stuck to my first idea so I’ve looked for a product management position. I landed a great job at Delivery Hero (Rocket Internet) as Global Product Operations Specialist, not even 2 months after Le Wagon ! I definitely feel more confident about discussing the architecture of a project, putting my hands in the code and solving technical problems. And all that thanks to Le Wagon ! I also spend some time on a personal project on the side to keep my coding skills.

Overall it was an amazing experience ! I talked a lot about the coding aspects but I also want to mention that other students were great people. The atmosphere is really about good vibes, we spent time together after work and we knew when to celebrate our accomplishments. I clearly recommend this for everyone who wants to change career or to have a deeper understanding of tech challenges facing companies nowadays.

I reached a point in my career where I realised there was no growing opportunities for me in the company I was working for. I was bored and I felt like a machine doing my job, it wasn't rewarding anymore and I didn't see the result of my work.

I did a little bit of research and joined some meet up groups until I stumble upon Le Wagon in Berlin, where I currently live. After a couple of meet ups with them, I realised that I really enjoyed coding. I spoke with some of their students and was surprised to learn that some of them didn't have any technical background at all, just like me. I was always curious to learn how things work and found that coding will be the perfect place to find that out.

After a lot of thinking I decided to join the bootcamp and was very happy when I was accepted. I decided to quit my job and start a new chapter in my life as developer. 

I enjoyed every single day of the 9 weeks bootcamp, every day I woke up looking forward to the new challenges we'll have at school, and was amazed to see how much you can learn in just 9 weeks. 

I found that the buddy system they use is simply great, as working in pairs really help you understand the problems and as the teachers say, "If you are able to explain something is because you fully understand it" and is absolutely true, so having your buddy of the day as your rubber duck really help you go through the problem and discover where you might have difficulties. 

During the bootcamp we had few visits from ex students that told us about their experiences after the bootcamp and that gave me the opportunity to learn about the job market and specially what to expect when applying for jobs, sharing their tips and advices. We also had the visit of few HR specialists that shared with us the dos and don'ts when writing your CV and Cover Letter and share their professional advice. 

I have to admit, I had my ups and downs during the bootcamp, as is very very intense but I never regretted my decision. A whole new world just opened and I'm so glad to be part of it. 

If you put your heart and effort in something, you'll achieve your objectives!

Le Wagon was one the most intense and fun learning experiences I have had. Developing a fully functioning online product together with the other students by the end of the nine weeks is such a great feeling. I will recommend it to everyone.

The bootcamp starts out by teaching you programming "the hard way" in the sense, that it teaches you a lot of the basics behind the frameworks you will be taught later on. That way you will gain a deeper understanding of the technologies you work with, which also means that you appreciate them a lot more when you get to use them.

Le Wagons self developed learning platform and style of teaching is also well thought out and constantly evolving. Having access to the platform will be useful to you way past the duration of the bootcamp if you plan on working as a developer in the future.

In many ways you get out of Le Wagon what you put into it. During the nine weeks you will cover a lot of different subjects - some of them more in depth, but many will be on a nice-to-know-basis for you to explore by yourself after the bootcamp. It is worth noting that our teachers were clear about that attending Le Wagon was not necessarily equal to getting a job as a web developer afterward. However, by the end of the bootcamp you will feel like you know how a web developer works and what to do next if you want to pursue web development as a career path.

Today, I use my previous work experiences from the journalism and communications field together with a lot of the technologies and workflows we learned about at the bootcamp in a job at a startup. So the "code the startup way"-approach of Le Wagon has been highly relevant for me.

Before Le Wagon, I was working as a Civil Engineer in a global infrastructure company, but I decided I needed to try and pursue my passion in coding and development. Reviews on sites like this one are what led me to choosing Le Wagon Sydney, and following a to a discussion with Charly Martin (the driver for Sydney) to make sure I was the right fit, I can tell you that I could not have been happier with my decision to join Le Wagon.

Le Wagon Sydney is an excellent bootcamp that really challenges you and pushes you to make the most out of the 9 precious weeks you have with them. Le Wagon teaches you the fundamentals of web development using Ruby on Rails and give you the skills to go out and create your own web app and make your ideas reality.

The course structure is well suited to coding as it a very hands on and ‘learn by doing’ experience. Day starts with a morning lecture (1h30) then challenges with a ‘Coding Buddy’ for the day (based on what you learnt in the lecture) and finally it finishes up with a live code where as a class we go over an exercise together and learn the nuances of everyone’s own approach to a problem.

Le Wagon Sydney has excellent teachers (and guest teachers from all over the world) which are genuinely interested in seeing you succeed. Everyone at Le Wagon has a contagiously great attitude and the Le Wagon Alumni Network is a resource that keeps on giving even once you have finished the course as everyone is happy to help each other out.

As a final note I would say that Le Wagon Sydney:

- Teaches you the technical skills for Web Development using Ruby on Rails, HTML and CSS, and JavaScript

- Cultivates an entrepreneurial mindset in its students

- Provides a new network of people from diverse backgrounds who share the same passion for development

- Pushes you hard but is well paced to get you turning your ideas into reality in just nine weeks

I have already recommended this to many people in my life and I will continue to do so as this is a fantastic course for a diverse range of people and skills levels looking to get into development

Being an economist, I had a big interest in data science and started to try to learn a bit by myself. I wasn’t very successful and decided that it would be better to learn with other people. Le Wagon seemed like the best choice. Even though the program focuses on web development, I felt it would be best to get a good grasp on programming before looking specifically at data. I applied for Batch #97 in Lisbon and managed to get in and join this great community.

It was a very intensive 9 weeks with a very sharp look at ruby and web-development. As a newcomer, it was amazing to start understanding how software works, how websites I use on a daily basis are structured and created, and actually create one by the end of the bootcamp. Classes focused on the practical side of how to use code as a developer and we were given the tools to look deeper and understand some of the underlying mechanisms of ruby and rails. Always working in pairs gave us a great way to learn with other people and understand how collaborative programming actually is.
During the bootcamp, I had the opportunity to talk with a lot of tech companies in the Lisbon Ecosystem and attend several talks on all issues tech.

During the bootcamp one of our lead teachers told me of a job opportunity at Landing.jobs, a Portuguese start-up. I had interviews and technical challenges and in the end I got the job!

It is very weird how much my life changed since I entered Le Wagon. Nowadays I’m fixing bugs and developing features that are actually being used by people. Before the bootcamp, I knew nothing about coding and was looking for opportunities in economics and now I’m actually a programmer learning more at a great company and with the tools to explore the world of programming.

No matter how prepared to rock your bootcamp experience you might think you are, Le Wagon’s intense 9-week program will put you in your place rather quickly. This shouldn’t stop you from enrolling if you are very new to programming, but once you apply, take each of your pre-bootcamp days very seriously, you will be grateful to yourself for that later.
I studied in Tokyo, and it was an unforgettable experience. All teachers and teaching assistants are very different in their backgrounds and approaches in how they tackle programming challenges, which proved to be extremely useful. You'll be continuously pushed to go an extra mile, so not only your programming skills but your work ethic will skyrocket at Le Wagon as well.
Best of luck to you, Paul and Sylvain, in continuing to make Le Wagon Tokyo such a great place!

Verdict: Worth the Investment

The Three Things that matter most: 

1. Learning Fundamental coding concepts that for most (including myself), would be impossible to learn independantly. 

2. An Alumni Network that will work wonders in the future, including the network for getting a job on course completion. 

3. Le Wagon is not an Educational factory that churns out Students, but is one that cares about developing every student, according to their needs. (Some students just get coding, others take longer - Le Wagon can accomidate both types). To put it simply, they care about Student Outcome's over Revenue. This is special. 

What Le Wagon is: 

1. A place to learn fundamentals of programming. A foundation where you can be confident that with time and cotinuious self-improvement, you can learn anything.

What Le Wagon is not: 

1. A one-stop shop to learn everything there is to learn about Development. You will be able to code, you can develop applications but continious self-improvement is needed to become a real developer beyond coding. As with anything, there is no quick fix. 



 

I studied chemical engineering and was working in logistics before joining Le Wagon in Lisbon.

I decided to quit my job and start learning how to code because I love math and logic and I was tired of my day to day work being so far away from that.  I joined Le Wagon because of the excellent reviews given by a friend of mine who did the course before and, now, I couldn’t agree more. 

It is very well structured.  Each day consists of one morning lecture (1h30);  then Exercises and at the end of the day, live-code.

The lecture prepares you for the exercises that you’ll do with a coding buddy. Each exercise is a challenge but much easier with this buddy system because it works as an exchange of knowledge between the buddies, and also because many times you think you don’t know how to solve an exercise but you just have to start talking with somebody to find out the solution. When this is not enough you always have teachers to help you.

The bootcamp is really intense and you learn so much in such a short time that in the last 10 days you are build alone with your team an app from scratch!

On top of this great structure, it is an amazing team of talented teachers always available to explain to you once more! 

In my opinion this is the best way to start over in the tech world: through this intensive course in a school with real evidence of successful students. 
This course will guide you from the basics to a stage where you can start developing by yourself.

I attended Le Wagon’s batch #122 in Lisbon last winter. The course is intense and often challenging, as it is really fast paced (which often drove me through a rollercoaster of emotions) but very rewarding in the end – their method really works! Moreover, Lisbon’s Le Wagon team did a great job ensuring there were plenty leisure moments to counter-balance our hard work: we’d all get together for a drink in the evening quite regularly, they’d organise a dinner every Friday and yoga classes twice a week were also included <3

Now that the bootcamp is over, I feel really empowered thanks to my new tech skills. Also, it’s great knowing that I’ll have access for life to Le Wagon’s online platform (featuring tons of really useful tutorials and other learning materials) and to the community of amazing former “Le Wagoners” around the world – both being an invaluable source of knowledge and networking!

I’m really glad I made the decision of joining Le Wagon and definitely recommend the bootcamp to those who feel excited about the challenge of putting their brains to work in order to unlock a universe of endless new opportunities for their professional lives!

Have you ever felt like you have good ideas, but you don’t really know how to make them real?

Let me tell you, I was having this exact same feeling for over one year.  As founders of a no-web start-up, my cofounder and I were feeling that to grow we needed to make our ideas accessible to everybody through web apps.  The option we had to do this was to hire tech guys or an agency to develop our ideas.  The problem was that as a start-up our budget was very restricted, so we were always getting to those typical questions:  What if the “magic” idea we have is not that good? What if the people we hire steal our idea?  What if they take more time than expected?  All these questions took us to the next question: why don’t we become the tech guys by learning to code? That was it!

I started the coding learning process through free online learning platforms.  But after a few months, I realized it was taking me nowhere.  I found two problems -  
The first was that I didn’t know what courses to choose.  What’s the first language I should learn? What should be the next one? How are they supposed to be linked?  
The second problem was that I was solving the challenges on their platform and if I was getting stuck I could just click the solve this exercise button and the platform was solving it for me.

Those two problems where the ones that brought me to applying for Le Wagon Lisbon.  

And let me summarize my experience there in few words: Le Wagon has been the best learning experience I have had in my life so far.  I truly believe it’s a game changer.  Everyday I was attending a two-hour lecture until 11 am.  After that I was solving challenges for five hours base on what I have had just learned, helped by teachers and assistant teachers. And, from 5pm to 7pm, I was discussing with the teaching staff and with my classmates on how I had solved the challenges and what could have been a better way.  The pace was perfect for me and after nine weeks I’m proud of my new knowledge in five different languages and in one framework.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, Le Wagon gives you solid bases to develop functional web apps and test them in the market in agile way and if the market doesn’t validate your idea you still have the knowledge to create another one and validate it again and so on.

If you feel like you have good ideas, my advice for you is that you learn to code.  Is the most effective way to test those ideas.  For me, Le Wagon was the best way to learn how to code, maybe for you is the same.