Le Wagon

After 4 years working for Ubisoft, I understood that developing a game has a
lot to do with Product Management; defining players needs, rationalizing
technological choices, and of course setting up an efficient daily production routine. However I was still feeling frustrated when interacting with developpers, as I was lacking technical knowledge. That’s why I decided to follow the Full Stack bootcamp of Le Wagon. Not only I was amazed by the quality of the lessons, but it also allowed me to get to know the Parisian tech ecosystem better, thanks to the events they regularly organize. I have to admit I was a bit skeptical about the “change your life” tagline, but 2 months later I have to admit they were right; On top of making new friends and integrating a strong community passionated about dev and products, I’m currently developping a new app with some friends from my batch.

I didn't know anything about code, so that was something completely new and different from everything I've done in my life before. I was not happy about my career, so I decided to change completely what I was doing.

I attended to the batch #330, in the end of 2019. I was so glad that they have a Le Wagon in my home city, so I wouldn't have to spend more money moving to a different city, at the same time I would have the opportunity to practice English and meet people from different countries. 

Learning how to code was a very big challenge to me and all the Le Wagon team were amazing during the entire process, not only teaching. They have a lecture during the morning, every day and after that we spend all day practicing and the teachers are there all day long to assist the students.
One thing that is nice for me is that we always do the challenges with one classmate, so we can think together about the solutions and share our point of view about the challenges.

In the last 3 weeks we have the opportunity to work in teams, so we can feel how it is working in real life. It was also nice to use GitHub in a team and at the end we have two projects to our portfolio.
I would definitely take the course again, I learned a lot.
I actually enjoyed to code, probably because of the experience I had at Le Wagon.

After several years working in Data Analytics and Digital Media, I was looking to make a career change. I started by study via free online courses and soon decided that I needed a more structured learning environment to progress to the level of Web Developer. Since I live in the U.S., I started by researching local coding bootcamps. I was introduced to Le Wagon after I learned of two friends who had completed the bootcamp in Berlin and Madrid. These friends were a huge resource and helped me in making my decision to enroll.

Many people were curious why I chose an international coding bootcamp. I was drawn to Le Wagon for the opportunity to work alongside classmates from across the globe. Having had experience working in Spain, the Barcelona program seemed to be a natural fit. 

The bootcamp started even before I arrived in Spain, with several hours of prep work. I was immediately drawn to the coursework and was eager to put what I was learning into practice. Thankfully, the format began with lectures to learn the days topic, followed by challenges to put what we'd learned into practice. The bootcamp curriculum allowed for us to be introduced to new concepts and really understand each subject matter. The teachers and teaching assistants were always available to help and support students along the way. In the final weeks, we leveraged all of the skills we'd learned to build a clone of Airbnb and our own web-based application. It truly is incredible how much we accomplish in just 9 weeks! 

Finally, after the program students have access to all lectures and coding challenges as well as a community of over 6,000 fellow alumni, teachers and staff. This network offers resources and support for navigating the job market post-bootcamp. I'm excited to see what's next for me as I continue to learn and land my first job in web development.

If you're thinking about bootcamps in general, or Le Wagon in particular, you're probably wondering is the realty far from the truth? Well I am a real person, and Le Wagon worked for me. It worked out better than I could have possibly hoped. I have a bachelors degree in hospitality management and worked for a decade in the industry before realising i needed a change. Discovering code has changed my life .I wrote my first line of code about 5 months before I was admitted to Le Wagon Barcelona. The bootcamp was very intensive and demanding. It really pushed me forward and made me step out of my comfort zone and safe to say the most rewarding learning experience of my life.. Le Wagon Barcelona provided an amazing learning environment with people from all around the globe along with amazing teachers and TAs. They are very supportive, understanding of your problems and helpful and overall very generous with their time and talent.   They have taught us how to think like a software engineer, how to quickly learn and use new concepts and skills, and how to collaborate as a team on fast-moving, complex projects. That skillset will always be desirable. This goes to show that the program is not about carving out web devs with a narrow set of technical skills or orientated only to those who wish to become a developer, but to those entrepreneurs who wish to begin their own startups, future product owners and digital nomads.   Le Wagon is like a home away from home for people who are willing to take a pretty stunning leap of faith in themselves. We left our jobs, moved across the country (some of us, at least, including me), and invested a good chunk of money into a form of education knowing there will be no degree or guaranteed job waiting for us when we're done. Le Wagon is an opportunity, but you have take advantage of it by giving it everything you've got. I took that leap of faith, and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.The whole experience changed my life. Met really interesting people. Made good friends. Learned awesome skills. And left with two projects as portfolio. In the end we leave as junior developers with a good amount of skills to help us keep improving. Safe to say the only obstacle standing in the way of changing your life is your self.

I'm a bachelor in engineer that was unhappily working in marketing until january 2019 when I finally decided to change my carrer path and go after something that made more sense for me.
A friend of mine told about the world of coding and how he thought would really suit me, he also told about Le Wagon. After searching a bit and talking to other people I decided to enroll. That was easily one of the best decisions I've ever made. 
From the classes that focused a lot on doing it ourselves instead of theory to the teachers and TAs that were always willing to go the extra mile to help us, I not only learned a lot but also got a world of opportunities to choose from. Le Wagon not only teaches you all the tools you need to begin trailing your path but also gives you all the tools to go after it not only in your country but the world.
All in all, I loved it and recommend anyone that is giving a thought about pursuing this path to do it too!

I studied at le wagon Barcelona in autumn 2019. My background was mainly digital marketing and growth hacking which meant that I spent most of my career finding innovative ways to connect users with innovative digital products. However, I always felt like something was missing... I needed to have more control over the products i was working on, I wanted to create my own products... That's why I decided to do le Wagon, and I wasn't disappointed.

The learning curve in 9 weeks is impressive, I am now able to create complex web applications and give life to my ideas. I also improved one of my favorite skills, Design. The ambiance at the school is really motivating, like a big family we all struggle through the 9 weeks while helping each other and filling the room with energy and creativity.  I can't recommend enough the Bootcamp and the staff working there. 

I joined Le Wagon Barcelona right after graduating from a three years’ bachelor in Business.

I decided to learn to code as it is a very valuable skill to have in the business field. I was also attracted by the creative aspect and all the challenges that come with it.

At first I was not sure how much I would like coding and if I would want to fully pursue it but I knew that either way I would use it to my advantage no matter the path I would choose to follow after finishing the bootcamp.

Le Wagon was really an eye opener. I enjoyed every day of the bootcamp and LeWagon Barcelona’s team made it very special as they were all very kind, patient and open minded. I also had a great time getting to know my teammates and working with them. Meeting people of such diversity was very enriching.

After finishing Le Wagon I can finally say that I have enjoyed coding so much that I will be looking for a job as a web developer. Le Wagon has helped me to know what I want to do with my life, I could not be more thankful to have been part of this adventure.

Before attending Le Wagon Barcelona, I was working in the IT department for an accountancy firm. I’d wanted to transition into a career in web development for a while, and thought working in an IT department would get me closer to that. I found Le Wagon soon after starting full-time work, and set my sights on it immediately. What appealed to me was being able to learn transferable skills and industry-standard languages/frameworks, allowing me to work for either myself or within a company, and Le Wagon offered that.

Le Wagon provided me with the tools needed for me to build a career in a field I am excited about. I feel comfortable in everything I was taught at the bootcamp, and feel as though I have a great platform to expand my knowledge going forward. A world of job opportunities has opened up for me, and I have even had companies come to me, instead of me to them. I couldn’t recommend Le Wagon enough!

Before Le Wagon I was active as an entrepreneur and working in startups. There, my tasks were always business related as I studied Economics & Business Administration. I was working a lot on spreadsheets, presentations and spent a lot of time in meetings. The part I loved most was building the strategy and business model as well as trying to find the next investor.

Even though, I loved the strategizing, one thing always bothered me. For each and every idea I had, may it be within the current startup or for a new one, I never could start myself. There was always an IT guy missing. I wanted to be able to build at least prototypes of these ideas and communicate what I want with the developers. This was the first reason to learn how to code.

The second reason was that I want to be able to define the future. For that, I felt the need to understand what is actually possible with technology. What can I expect from the developers? What business models and ideas are actually doable? And which way is a good one to go there?
Last, but not least, what brought me to Le Wagon was that I also wanted to learn to build products, not just features. I wanted to figure out how you can go from zero to a product that people actually want. And especially how to do it quick.
To conclude, the urge of understanding tech made my decision to learn coding and to learn it at Le Wagon.

So, now, I’m job hunting. Coding was so much fun, that I want to do it professionally and learn a lot more. However, I’m pretty open as I would love to combine my newly adapted dev skills as well as my passion for creating and strategy. First, I am going to apply in some startups or bigger companies so that there hopefully is someone who can mentor me a bit. And after some month / years I want to go back founding an own company from an idea that I validate during the job. So, right now I‘m creating my own portfolio page with the two projects from the bootcamp as well as another own small app, apply a lot and work on my dev skills.

What really helped me to get the confidence to apply for dev jobs was, especially, our final project at Le Wagon: Shuffle (shuffle-jobs.com), an tinder-like app to connect you with the right companies in a matter of minutes to find your next dream job! Another, awesome “side effect” is that I am now confident to learn everything quick and that I am able to dive deeper into tech. Further, the great community within my batch as well as the 6000+ community didn’t just lead me to find new friends but is also an amazing resource for support and ideas. Thanks, Le Wagon, for boosting my capabilities and creating such an amazing experience.

Prior to Le Wagon I worked in Finance, primarily as a commodities trader on Wall Street. In 2016 I saw some of my colleagues and associates leave the business to attend coding bootcamps. It was then I realized that there was an entire tech industry I knew almost nothing about; an industry with much more potential than the one I was in.

As electronic trading became the norm, programming skills became more valuable than trading experience itself. In my industry, companies that were hiring wanted P.h.d. level academic backgrounds with advanced algorithmic programming experience, so I figured that I should at least get started somewhere! I began taking a few online courses and found that web development was really interesting, requiring both technical thinking and creativity. My goal was to become either a front end or full stack developer. I tried the self-taught route, but like most people found that not only was there too much to learn, but difficulty in figuring out what to learn.

Fast forward a year later. Taking the bootcamp at Le Wagon Barcelona gave me the skills needed to build an app from start to finish.  It's amazing what can be accomplished in such a short amount of time. The atmosphere is supportive and collaborative, and I've made more friends in 2 months than I have in the last two years. I've been working on finding a job as a developer since the end of the bootcamp, and already had a technical interview through my connections at Le Wagon.

Have you ever been in front of a tech product and had the feeling that you did not understand at all how it had been built? That was exactly how I felt before doing Le Wagon. 

I was in my last year of a degree in International Business Economics when I realized I wanted to do something more. I started asking myself: “What do I want to do next?“, and so I started thinking about what I had enjoyed the most during the university, what were my interests, etc... And when doing that reflection, I realized that my favorites classes were always those in which we talked about tech products and entrepreneurship. 

“But I don’t know much about technology…“, was my next concern. I was open to keeping learning new skills, so I started looking for boot camps and then I found Le Wagon, which offered exactly what I was looking for.

And now, as a recent graduate of Le Wagon, I can say that the program fully met my expectations. The days at Le Wagon were very practical, which helped me a lot to consolidate the concepts and learn their day to day use. Moreover, every day we were assigned a buddy with which we had to do some exercises, which was a really good opportunity to learn from our colleges. But most importantly, I would like to say that the Bootcamp was not only a big chance to learn technical skills, but also to meet really interesting people from all around the globe. The vibes during the 9 weeks were just amazing!!! Energy, motivation, and eagerness to learn were the air I breathed every day.

Thanks to Le Wagon, now I feel ready to start a career in Product Management.

My name is Mireia. Originally from Spain, I was part of Batch 341 of Le Wagon in Barcelona.

First of all, I have to say that I was a little worried because I didn’t have any background in tech. I studied business management. And before the bootcamp I was working at a coworking space in Barcelona as a Community Manager. So my knowledge about the tech world was more related to business and not in a technical way.

My first contact with programming was because of my brother. He was learning computer science and one day while he was coding a videogame I asked him how he did it. Once he started explaining it to me was just amazed! I thought that it was incredible all the things you were able to do with something called “methods” and with a couple of parenthesis.

Then I decided to start digging into programming to know at last the basics and my curiosity grew to a point where I started talking to everyone about it. A friend of mine told me that if I was really interested in it the best way to get started would be a coding bootcamp. He recommended to me the one at Le Wagon. His girlfriend did it one year ago and she was very happy after doing it. And now she was currently working in a company as a backend developer.

I looked it up and had great reviews. The program was very complete and they seemed to have a nice community of people so I decided to join it.

When I show it to one of my friends who is a software developer he couldn’t believe that they would be able to teach so much in just 9 weeks.

Since the very first moment Le Wagon felt like the perfect place to me. It didn’t feel like a regular school at all. It was an open space full of awesome and smart people from all over the world ready to do their best and learn as much as possible. I felt like I was back at the coworking space.

Because I am someone who believes that the only way to learn is by doing, I really enjoyed the format of the bootcamp. We had one and a half hours of lecture in the morning and we were solving different challenges in pairs for the rest of the day for the first 7 weeks.

In the last two weeks we had a big project to build our own web application from scratch. When that started was the moment when I realised: “Wow! I actually know how to do this!” I couldn’t believe it. After just 7 weeks we developed an awesome product called BoostIt, which I am really proud of and is now part of my portfolio.

I cannot be anything but grateful to Le Wagon’s team. They were very helpful, inspirational and they never said no. It didn’t matter how challenging anything we wanted to build was. They helped me to realize that it doesn’t matter the background or experience that you have, if you really want, you can learn how to code.

So now, do you want to know what’s the best part of the bootcamp?

The fact that the end is the starting point for your new life! You don’t say goodbye on your last day. You say “see you soon, friends!” Once you finish you are part of this big community they have and you are still in touch with all the TAs, your colleagues and other people that did the bootcamp.

Now I cannot wait to keep learning and growing as a full stack developer. The tech world is what I like and I am looking forward to see how far the projects I am currently working on go.

Thank you Le Wagon Barcelona #341!