Le Wagon

Before I joined Le Wagon, I was feeling a bit lost about what I was doing in my career. I spent my early twenties working in office administration and pubs and back again - all the while, fitting in my free hours on free coding lessons on the internet. As much as I gained a passable amount of HTML and CSS from these, I found I was creeping at a turtles pace in my web developer knowledge. All the more, it was a bit of a lonely experience doing this by myself. I knew barely anyone who was in the same industry, let alone was in the same path as myself.

So in April 2018 I joined Le Wagon’s nine-week course. What I noticed from the first day was that there was a truly diverse mix of backgrounds. Those on a break from university, those who dreamt of building their own product and some who were just excited by programming languages but it a lot to take going alone.

In the first couple of days I realised that I was being challenged in ways I had never had before. Stripped down to the bare bones of programming and we were learning data types and we could use them in real code. The interface built on Kitt is an encyclopaedia of knowledge, the lectures, notes and challenges all being readily available meant that even if I didn’t fully understand some of the concepts I could refresh on them that night or after the course had finished.

By the last two weeks we were ready to design and develop our own product from scratch, using everything we had learnt in the previous seven weeks. It was the closest we had to working in a real working environment with code reviewing and keeping to deadlines. We were able to present these to our peers and friends on a demo night on the last day of the course.

There’s a real community hub at Le Wagon, right from the lecturers and teaching assistants explaining terms to us on an individual basis to current students and alumni from all over the world. With everyone having different goals they wanted to achieve after the course, it was brilliant to have the support from students-turned-friends who wanted to see our careers springboard after we finished the course. It was a real confidence boost to feel comfortable learning new skills by myself and applying for developer roles after just nine weeks. I just wish I could do it all over again.

I come from a Media & Communication background and I got to the point where I wanted to learn some new skills and bring them up to a new level. As Barcelona is probably the best location right now for the fast-paced evolution of information technology I decided to sign up for Le Wagon here, expecting to work within the area as a Full Stack developer. My goal was to bring my tech ideas to life in the next future. 

I chose Le Wagon because it's not only a coding academy, it's a school for entrepreneurs. It has been the place where I could develop a different set of skills in different fields and where I had the chance to build an actual product.

The experience at Le Wagon has been an amazing, exciting and very fast-paced journey. During such time I've levelled up my knowledge of programming, going from basic knowledge of the Ruby and Ruby on Rails languages to developing, deploying and launching my very first app. Thanks to the the bright-minded and very high skilled individuals who were teaching, driving and supporting me I have seen this process through from ideation to design, coding to developing, deploying to launching and the skills I have picked up along the way will be invaluable in my deep journey into Software Engineering.

I would like to thank Le Wagon and Gus plus all the people that made this possible, the folks I have made friends with along the way for making the experience unforgettable. This field is collaborative above anything else, and working and studying along-side amazing, like-minded developers from a range of ages and backgrounds has been inspiring. Plus, Barcelona is just beautiful, it's a kind of magic city as it has lots to offer.

I would highly recommend anybody to join Le Wagon because it's a place where any ambitious individual will come up a full-shaped developer with an entrepreneurial mind-set. 

    I found Le Wagon - Rio de Janeiro by chance one day, I was unhappy with my career and wanted to make a change. I had been studying web development on my own for a little while but with my work and family obligations it was hard to make any real headway. I started looking at bootcamps and while looking through reviews I happened upon Le Wagon - Rio de Janeiro. It was almost unbelievable to find such a highly rated course and at a affordable price. I was skeptical at first but since they had a course in a city where I had contacts that I trust I had them go check it out. They were so impressed with the course I went for it and I can honestly say it was one of the best experiences of my life.

   From day one I knew I had made the right choice, the material moves fast and you have to be willing to put in the work. The day starts with a lecture at 9 and from 1030 until 530 you work on challenges and projects. You work with a different partner everyday which is one of the best parts, its great having someone right there going through it with you and who you can talk through problems with. When neither of you are able to come up with a solution, you have teachers who are there to guide you to a solution. The teachers are great at getting you going in the right direction whether that is pointing you towards the documentation or just being someone that you bounce ideas off of until you have that ahh moment. from 530 till 7 you have a live code session where you have problems that you have not seen yet and you code in front of the class. This can be pretty intimidating but, it really helps you reinforce what you learned and helps you figure out how to work through problems under pressure.

   The course has a great focus towards entrepreneurship and there is a great amount of support available after the course through there alumni slack channel. The channel is super active and you can always find someone to help you. The channel also has a very active job channel as well, which is good if that is what you are looking for after the bootcamp.

   I just wish with the course was longer, not because you need to learn more, honestly its amazing at how much you can do by the end of the 9 weeks. I wish the course was longer just because it was so enjoyable, it keeps you outside your comfort zone everyday. You are surrounded by amazing people going through the same thing as you and the teachers have some of the best patience I have ever seen.

After 8 years playing poker professionally and having just turned 30, i was in a hurry to find something else to do with my life until a friend suggested code and Le Wagon to me.

It was such an amazing life experience. The way they pushed me to learn, it was just what i needed to start a new chapter in my life.

Great friendly environment, teachers always willing to help and the opportunity to build a project from scratch is the perfect way to learn how things work.
I'm sure i will remember those 9 weeks for the rest of my life and i will always be grateful for it.

I came to Le Wagon through a friend's recommendation. I remember when he heard about it, then decided to do it, and later told me his experience. It was all so amazing, I thought he was exaggerating. He really wasn't.
Le Wagon was everything he told me about and more. I was a designer and now, a little more than two months later, I am a web developer.

I've been fascinated with computers for almost my whole life. And my whole life i've steered a wide path from it because people tend to put us in little boxes and, as much as I loved science and was super curious, I ended up in the creative-artsy box. while I was growing up, I was somehow led to believe there creative-artsy people were not cut out for technical jobs. So I didn't even try. It took thirty years, a lot of courage and a deeper understanding of multidisciplinary skills to finally question that and boy, oh boy, how wrong could I be.

Because of the structure of the course and because it's so intense, there's not much time to waste. Don't get me wrong, we love to party and there's plenty of beers to be had, but that's usually after a really hard day's work. You get from a "never coded before" level to a "coding all day everyday" really fast and it's really fascinating to go through, and watch such a diverse group of people go through it with you. I could not be more pleased with the didactics and the pace of the bootcamp. It is really intense and it is really hard. For me at least, that had no prior knowledge and no prior experience with actual coding (or anything tech-related, for that matter), everyday was a struggle. But as much as I struggled, the sense of accomplishment was that much greater when I could finally figure it out.

A lot of times I couldn't actually, not by myself, and that's fine. The buddy system and the T.A's were really helpful in this aspect. They really do guide you in the right path and you feel really stupid sometimes because once they point the direction out to you solving a challenge actually seems really simple. And next thing you know you ask for help and figure it out even before they have a chance to explain the problem to you and you just go "oh, never mind, i got it!".

I think even if the bootcamp was just lectures and challenges I would have learned a lot. But nothing compares to the last three weeks. You actually get to work, as a group, on a Airbnb clone and on our own project and that is the game-changer: because collaborating on a group effort is hard, and that's what the market is all about. That was even more important than learning to code, for me. Learning to work around other people's code, to improve it, to correct it, to have my own code improved and corrected, to solve conflicts and elusive bugs. I cannot believe we got to design a product from idea to fully functional in 10 days, but hey, such is life aboard the Wagon.

I have attended Le Wagon Bali this summer and now I can safely say enrolling in the Le Wagon bootcamp was one of the best decisions that I made.

Prior to attending the bootcamp I have worked for a large IT consultancy but more on the project management side however as I was really interested in the digital side I always wanted to learn coding but I never seemed to be able to find enough time and motivation to do it on my own using online resources.

Originally I considered doing a computer science masters however having a full time job, the time and costs involved in completing a masters degree made it not a feasible option. Therefore the bootcamp seemed like a good alternative as I was able to take some time off to attend the bootcamp without having to give up my job completely.

I choose Bali as I always wanted to visit it and thought that by attending the bootcamp there I would be able to explore Bali as well. Choosing Bali was definitely the right decision as I was far away from home (London). I didn’t have to worry about life admin or other commitments (which I would have had if I would have done the bootcamp back at home) meant that I was able to fully focus on learning and making the most of the bootcamp.

The bootcamp was very intense (usually classes would start at 9 and end around 6:30, some weeks we would study 6 days a week). The first few weeks were especially tough as we covered a lot of different topics in a relatively short period of time however being surrounded by supportive teachers and equally motivated classmates really made this an enjoyable experience. Every day was well structured, it consisted of lectures and practical exercises. Probably the most fun part of the bootcamp was the project weeks during these weeks everything that we have learnt in the first 6 weeks really came together as we got to work in teams and build apps based on our own ideas.

In addition to the learning, the bootcamp had a great social side as most of the classmates in my batch were not from Bali and came here on their own, everybody was keen to get to know each other, socialise and do things in the evenings and explore other parts of Bali on days off.

Overall I cannot recommend Le Wagon Bali highly enough, I have learnt so much, met many amazing people, had a very enjoyable experience and got to live it Bali for 2 months!

I have always considered learning code. Coming from a totally different background, the transition was not easy. I had to overcome many personal fears : Is it the right move? Will I be able to keep up with the algorithms? Will I be rigorous enough? I remember trying to learn all by myself on different e-learning platforms but it did not really work out. When I joined Le Wagon I was delighted. I immediately felt like it was the right bootcamp for me : product oriented. Something tangible to learn something totally new. The first few weeks were quite confusing as my mind was saturated with brand new words and concepts: functions, models, controllers, views, databases… But I eventually started to like it thanks to the outstanding teaching team! A whole new world was opening its doors. After graduating from Le Wagon I started working as a freelance developer right away. I partnered with another alumni (hi Franklin) and it surely helped to start this new journey. Le Wagon does not only give you technical skills, it is also a dope spot to meet cool people! I am now fully enjoying my freelancer status as I can work from wherever I like, build cool products and meet inspiring entrepreneurs! I am also still improving my development skills, because obviously it is never done. I can now admit it and say it out loud, it was the best decision EVER and TOTALLY worth it!

8 years after graduating from a business school I believed it was time to learn something new, to stop the never ending daily routine at work, and get some new skills. I wanted to learn how to code to be able to lauch my Minimum Viable Product. So I can turn a nice idea into something real, to actually test it, to overcome the fear that I am not legitimate to build something. Le Wagon empowered me in an incredible way, I learnt how to code, I spent an amazing time. If you think about it, and you can take the time, then just do it, do not overthink, it is the best way to spend your money and your time. Now I even discovered that I love to share what I learnt, by being an teaching assistant for the new students, just 3 months after I completed my course. 

Go for it !

After a year working on sales operations and growth, I felt like I was lacking technical skills: all I did was creating non-scalable process that required a lot of manual work and repetitive actions.

I joined Le Wagon batch #146 to complete my business background and finally be able to bring code and automation to my process.

Even though I felt completely lost at the beginning, the methodology developed at Le Wagon - and truly passionate and skillful teachers, thanks a loooot - helped me scale up my technical skills. Working for 9 full weeks with teammates on practical and incremental code challenges helped me getting completely comfortable with what was gibberish to me before :

- Talk about technical subjects with developers 
- Implement technical sales tools 
- Connect to any API 
- Develop in-house tools to support growth needs 
- Scrape any website I wish in minutes

These are just few examples of the skills I developed thanks to this amazing Bootcamp that got me form knowing nothing about coding to being fully independent about creating whatever needs to be done, just what I needed.

Le Wagon : an incredible team, an amazing methodology and brilliant teammates.

Thanks a lot, 
Victor

I was a student in the batch #100 in Paris after finishing my business studies at ESCP Europe. After having graduated, I felt I had to acquire more technical skills (understand : learn to code). I knew about Le Wagon from an alumni from my school. So I decided to try my luck … And I was pretty amazed by my time there !


During my 9 weeks there I really appreciated the way code is taught. On a typical day there is 2 hours of class and the rest of the day is spent doing exercices with another student. You never work alone at Le Wagon. Most of the progress is made during those exercices, by cooperating with your buddy.


But what I enjoyed the most is the general philosophy. I really felt like nothing was impossible to learn. On the first day, most of us had never opened the terminal, and 9 weeks later we designed and coded an entire website including a pretty complex backend and beautiful frontend. When I face a problem I have never seen, I am able to tackle it by myslef.


I am now working at Backmarket as a Product Owner, a job I would have not been able to do without Le Wagon. Thank you so much, it was some of the most exciting weeks of my life !

Before attending Le Wagon Milano, I had high expectations from the bootcamp, but I was far from imagining how much I could learn in only 9 weeks.

Even though I had some knowledge in programming, I was challenged from day 1. The whole journey is intensive, and everything is thought to offer the best learning experience to the students. The wide teaching staff allows to learn from many developers, with each member coming to teach his own area of expertise. The pair programming on small projects and challenges gives opportunities to think beyond solutions that each of us could have produced alone. The final project is a great hands-on experience to work in team as a developer.

Moreover, Le Wagon taught me how to approach one problem as a developer, and how to figure out the way to solve it.

Le Wagon’s bootcamp gives you all the tools to become a developer if you are ready to take them and work hard. I totally recommend !

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.