Le Wagon

Never learned so much in such a short period. I decided to make a career change to coding because I felt I needed a big change in my life. Before enrolling the bootcamp I looked at all the reviews from various websites and Le Wagon was the only bootcamp that had great reviews. Then I decided to join the bootcamp and I’ve been to an interview with Alex Tombeur, the UK Manager who was extremely helpful to explain me the course structure and the steps to join the bootcamp.

In less than 9 weeks I managed to work in a team of four and created 2 complex web products. Also, the staff have been helpful, very well prepared teachers and teaching assistants. Throughout the bootcamp I've made a lot of friends and they were like my second family.

I had the opportunity to attend many events and to be introduced to many people thanks to Le Wagon driver.

The post-bootcamp support is very helpful. The week after completing the bootcamp, Le Wagon arranged a hiring week event at their office in London where I had the opportunity to speak with recruiters and employees looking for junior web developers. 

Finally, studying at Le Wagon was the best thing I have ever done and to be honest the bootcamp was much more than I expected.

I graduated from Le Wagon, London in September 2019 and immensely enjoyed it. The entire experience from start to finish was fantastic: the teachers and everyone working there are very supportive and helpful, the lectures are broken down nicely for everyone to understand and the additional information provided on their platform along the way is perfectly done. I am really impressed of how the course was structured and what they (and we) managed to achieve in these 9 weeks. My most favourite part was the projects weeks, where we got to work in a team (I was in a team of four) and build projects just like we would in a work environment and then present the final project in front of everyone. It was a proud moment for all of us as it's unbelievable to imagine where we had started from and what we had achieved in such a short time.

A few years ago I tried to start my business but was dependant on others for the technical skills. This year, when I decided to leave my field and start-up a new project, I wanted to be independent and autonomous to code the MVP myself. Le Wagon taught me front languages such as HTML and CSS, but also helped me master Ruby and the Rails framework. In the beginning I was doubtful as we had to absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time. It seemed confusing and overwhelming! All along, teachers told us to “trust the program” and they were right. With their help and the buddy system, it all made sense when we started to work on the framework (around week 6).

Thanks to Le Wagon, I coded the MVP for my start-up, learned to pitch my project to an audience met amazing people with various backgrounds and even my co-founder! :)

Well, the true story is maybe a bit more than this. Coding was always intriguing to me, as my generation is so used to instant gratification, somehow after I tried a bit coding on some mobile app, I found coding is somehow similar to instant gratification, because you see the result right away, or wether right or wrong. This is how I got engaged.

I had a few different jobs after graduate, and I see none of it as the thing I would like to do for the rest of my life, that is to say, none of it actually mattered to me. At that time I felt lost, How exactly I wanna spend my life? Am I surrounded by the people who share the same passion as I do? Alright, it was too overwhelming just think of it. Let me think of how to spend the summer first. For example, let’s learn some coding for fun this summer! And seems like the closest upcoming batch is the one of Le Wagon, I didn’t even do any more research and just signed up after the interview with Le Wagon Barcelona. And, I made no mistake!

I woke up happy everyday during the two months of class, I met plenty of people who share the passion as I do, we had countless amazing and inspiring conversations, we laughed hard together, we learned coding together, we did 2 projects together. It all happened in only 2 months. Honestly Le Wagon opened another door for me, for the first time I feel closer to the life I want, I feel slightly under control of my life. For now I am working on my own portfolio, and trying to land my first job in tech!

I graduated from Law School at UFRJ in Rio de Janeiro - Brazil.

Afterwards, I started my attorney activity, had some teaching experience in college and also at "BAR" preparation courses (in which I taught Tax-Law) and studied for "concursos públicos" which are public tests as a means to ingress as a public servant (as are Judges and Public Attorneys).

During this time, I had two post-graduate courses in Tax-Law and Customs Law. So after being in a market in crisis for 3 years, I had to change.

The few friends of mine who were thriving were programmers. There's where I should head, then.

I started to study Programming at Stanford's CS101 and then Harvard and Yale's CS50.

I went to Portugal to attend at a Bootcamp called "Academia de Codigo" but they only told me that I had to be portuguese to attend when I was there (and after 3 testing phases).

Then, a friend who works in England told me to attend Le Wagon in Rio.

Oh! The irony of life. I had to go to Portugal to see that the best bootcamp in the world was next door.  

It was one of the most intense experiences in my life. Staying in the same place studying from 9 to 19 is tiresome but also very rewarding. I learned more in two months there than in the past 6 months studying alone at home by myself.

Now that it's finished I feel more than ready to join the market and I'm really glad to have done it. My goal now is to be able to help other people find their worth again, just as I did.

Hence, this review. I hope I could be of any help for you.

Before Le Wagon, I worked in music industry during 7 years. I created a record label beside my studies and I promoted kind of 150 events all around France and other countries in Europe. I have 2 music studios in Paris for producing and post-production. I am also an artist signed on 7 different record labels in Europe, and I often play in lots of clubs or festivals. I decided to stop promoting events and working with other artists in studio to develop new competences in coding. I wanted to be able to launch my digital projects and work with startups or bigger companies.
After a fascinating and hardworking summer at Le Wagon, I am looking for a job as a developer and I continue my artist life ! Today I can achieve my application ideas and work on new inspiring projects ! I am so glad to understand what happens behind the web, and this is really rewarding ! I will never thank enough Le Wagon for this experience  ! !

I spent an amazing time at Le Wagon Paris.

Staff and atmosphere are truly benevolent. Pace is fast, which is good and enable students to get great coding skills.Everyday, we start with a 1-hour lesson with a teacher, before diving into a bunch of exercises with a buddy, and the help of teacher assistants when needed. Buddies change everyday, which also allow the students to get to know each others. At the end of the day, a live coding session let the students wrap up all concepts learnt throughout the day.

On top of that, Le Wagon organizes a lot of events with entrepreneurs, companies, etc which may contribute to your thinking if you’re considering a switch in your career, or just are curious.It was really an empowering experience, as well as a life changer for me. After 3 years in business development, I am now a full stack developer, and a teacher assistant in Paris! 

I decided to complete the Le Wagon bootcamp fullstack program in order to learn the Tech skills to have more control over my own start-up. I realize now that Le Wagon taught me more than code: I have developed an empowering new mindset and logic. Besides teaching all the necessary skills, they have taught me to solve problems by myself and I cannot say «thank you» enough to express my gratitude.
The modules were very well structured  it takes you through the material in a logical order which is easier to learn, and the Teachers were amazing, passionate, and their teaching style is highly engaging.
I feel like I am part of a huge tech family, It is without a doubt the best educational program I’ve had!

It’s been almost 4 weeks since I left Barcelona and Le Wagon behind and I am left with some pretty incredible skills and memories that I will carry with me for a very long time. Deciding to spend my summer in Barcelona and at Le Wagon was probably one of the best decisions ever. I was studying my first year at uni as a Business Administration and IT student when I first was introduced to coding. Meanwhile the coding classes I had in uni made me doubt however I would ever be able to code Le Wagon proved me wrong!

The Le Wagon experience is one I would recommend to everyone. Except giving me a new set of skills the bootcamp also gave me a huge confidence boost, knowing that I am now capable of doing something I never thought I would be able to do.

I am so grateful for all of the incredible teachers and staff at the Barcelona campus and also my amazing classmates. Now I am looking forward to learning a lot more and searching for new projects to work on. The first one will be building a website for my fathers company!

Two months straight of lectures, algorithm courses and a variety of programming language, from 9 am to 7 p.m, - wait, did I also mention the homework and self-study ?. That looks like hell, but, actually, it can be the best decision of your life. Well, at least that was mine !

Few months ago I’ve decided to further my education and, at the same time, make a career change after a life in the finance sector. Because why not, after all.. While it’s important to show commitment, sometimes your goals and perspectives change, and you crave for something more meaningful to you. After an intense benchmarking session,  I set my sights on « Le Wagon », got enrolled, passed the tests, and start what would become the rightest call I would ever done in my life.
And let me tell you that this bootcamp lived up to my expectations. Great teaching staff, great teaching method, and a room full of likeminded students/professionals coming from different backgrounds. Now, don’t get me wrong it was not all fun and games. My brain was literally be fried during this bootcamp, but in good way though. They were all about providing an efficient and practical knowledge of the web development world, and that's what I earned. Looking back, I feel empowered and happy that I did invest in myself, that I have done something that was right for me. Something that gave me a real perks in my new job as a freelance Web/App developer.

So stop wondering, entrepreneur, freelancer, and other curious mind of this world if your train goes off the track, pick it up, pick it up…and follow Le Wagon !

I flew out to Bali to cover all of the below in 9 weeks, and designed, pitched and built two working projects. An Airbnb clone, and an idea I had, to utilise APIs in order to discover locations to visit in a new city, displayed via a heatmap 🔥

- JavaScript, jQuery
- Git, GitHub, Heroku
- Ruby and coding basics
- Parsing, Storing, Scraping & API
- Software Engineering (OOP)
- Database & SQL
- Front-End (HTML, CSS, Bootstrap)
- Ruby on Rails

Le Wagon's programme was absolutely fantastic, with a structure that was inclusive and set up to allow all types of learners to excel. The teaching staff were great and always on hand to help should a problem arise, as well as giving well-led lectures on the content within the course.

The course has opened my eyes to the technical world in more ways than I'd have hoped, taught me so much, whilst being acting as an excellent launchpad to an MSc to learn more.

One element of the course I really liked was that the skills were taught to pretty much set up the students to build their own business once they were finished should they want to.

If you're thinking about learning to code I'd highly recommend Le Wagon!

Thanks again!

I had tinkered with basic front-end programming for a while, HTML5 & CSS. As I was building my company from the ground up, I couldn't afford any programmer. So I chose a CMS and taught myself to code basic rendering. But as the months went by, and I started to discover more insights into my consumers' lives, I started to realize that I had nowhere near the ability to push the digital products that had a chance to succeed in the market. As all things started to come together, I chose to terminate my business - for other reasons than my own technical shortcomings obviously - and enrolled in Le Wagon a few months after.

The idea was basically to gain a deeper understanding of the tech universe, i.e. how does one gain a programmer mindset  ? I also wanted to connect with different personalities. I was quite certain that some of the people I was going to meet would have lived different and interesting lives. The idea was to reset my mind and use that school as a stepping stone towards new high.

I was not disappointed. The bootcamp in itself is hard, and even harder for those of us that do not have a deep scientific education. So the first weeks are a-killing. But the program and educational support have achieved near perfection. The curriculum is thought as blocks that will all come together in the future. If you struggle with your challenges in the first days, you are learning a valuable lesson about the programmer's life. Our job is mainly to bring solutions to problems. You cannot take shortcuts. As a programmer you gotta pay your fair share of hustle, sweat and frustration. But keep at it for a few days, and the small joy of overcoming difficulties are gonna compound in your mind and you will find new motivation, as well as new abilities. Teachers and Teaching Assistants @ Le Wagon are great individuals who listen and declutter the path for you - they never do your chores though. If you are good or somewhat already a bit experienced, there are additional challenges that you can complete.

The high point of Le wagon is the last two weeks, when you are associated with 3 of your fellow wagoners to build a real-life web application that is to be presented in front of a live audience of 200+ people. These are intense weeks, as you should make use of everything that you have learned so far. There is teamwork as well, but not the kind you are used to, the kind with everyone one of your teammates being a programmer as well, the kind with git commit, git push and above all git merge conflict. You are talking a new language. You are building something. Your life has changed then and there.

And there is the people also, first and foremost. Let's face it, you are not gonna be a functional developer after ANY bootcamp. To do so you need to rely on a set of likely-minded positive characters and energies. And above all keep coding and growing. It does not matter how good you are or how good you think you are. Le Wagon's highest value proposition is that it gives you the tools and the network to go down this path - should you choose to do so.  During my 9 weeks @ Le wagon, I have blossomed into a new individual, mainly because there are very few moments in your life when you are surrounded by every age group and every character. My advice is to use it as a sandbox for what will come later.

As for me, I am now freelancing on design and code, mainly to have the time to learn dart and flutter. My goal is to release one app a month.

Thank you for reading,
Christophe