Le Wagon

I studied at Le Wagon in Amsterdam - A beautiful city and a vibrant group of genuinely interesting individuals!

After working as a picture framer for around 7 years, I was looking for a change. I had built a website for the company that I was working for and really enjoyed the process. I started doing a few more (mainly wordpress) sites for charities and small business’ and I realised that maybe this was the career change I was looking for.
I taught myself in the evenings and at the weekend using online resources and was really enjoying it. I learned a lot but after a few months I felt like I was going in circles and had reached the limit of online learning.
This is where the decision to join a bootcamp came. I looked at a broad range of bootcamps, each with different structures and learning styles.
I chose Le Wagon for a number of reasons. I really liked the fact that all of the learning resources were available after the bootcamp ended. This was also very helpful when I unexpectedly had to miss 2 days of the bootcamp. I could read the lectures and keep up with the rest of the class. I also liked the way that the bootcamp had a strong social group. I now feel I have a strong group of like-minded developers who can help me when I get stuck.
The bootcamp was hard work, especially as I had to travel into Amsterdam each day. It was however worth every minute and I’m really glad I made the decision to take part -- I’m now confident and ready to become a junior Ruby developer!

If you can see from the other reviews, Le Wagon gets high marks as a programming bootcamp. It has a well-designed, rigorous curriculum that does a great job starting you at A (almost no knowledge of programming) and getting you to Z (being an autonomous developer that can build applications). The teachers and TAs were knowledgeable, supportive and great teachers. The bootcamp is absolutely worth the price. It has made me an autonomous software developer, which is exactly what I was looking for - of course, I have plenty more to learn but I have no problem digging into documentation that would've intimidated me before.

About Barcelona in particular, I couldn't have made a better choice of location. Seriously, if you decide to go with Le Wagon, do it in Barcelona. The batch had an amazing group of people that you rarely find in one place - different nationalities who had all lived abroad and developed the open-mindedness and maturity that comes with that. When the bootcamp ended, I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we experienced "Le Wagon withdrawal". This was not linked to the program and curriculum (as great as it was) but the sense of community that developed during the Barcelona batch.

I took part of Le Wagon boot camp Paris batch #59 in the scope of my entrepreneurship major at HEC Paris. Joining Le Wagon was the best decision I made during the year. The program allows you to develop:
-    A solid basis in coding, ruby on rails, html, CSS, Javascript, SQL…
-    An overview of product management
-    A strong network of web developers extremely united and helpful for future projects

Wanting to launch my startup right after graduation my goal at Le Wagon was to learn how to work with a technical team and develop a prototype that I could show to potential investors. Thanks to Le Wagon it is mission accomplished, we are now incubated at Station F.

At Le Wagon, the program is built in a learn by doing format that promotes team work. Each day you start with a one and a half hours’ class then immediately put in practice your learnings by solving exercises with a class mate. This helps build strong bonds with your colleagues and learn how to code within a team which is key to succeed in future web development jobs. The culmination of the program is coding your own prototype within a team of 4 people. The experience is amazing because it gives you a taste of product management and the role of a CTO within a technical team.

If you are looking to enrol in a coding boot camp don’t base your decision only on the languages you want to learn. There are tons of tutorials out there to learn whatever you want. What is important, in my opinion, is the boot camp’s teaching culture and the tools and network they provide you with to successfully accomplish your goals when you leave the camp. I highly encourage anybody considering joining Le Wagon as it is an experience that will continue to give you benefits even after the 9 week classes.

I took part in Le Wagon’s Fullstack Bootcamp as a member of the Batch #48 in Paris between January and March 2017. When I joined Le Wagon, I was taking a second gap year during my Master in Management in Paris, after having worked for a year and a half in Finance, Business Development in a Tech start-up and Venture Capital. Throughout my experiences, it quickly appeared obvious to me that if I wanted to specialize in Entrepreneurship (which I did), coding was not an option but an obligation.

I had heard about Le Wagon from a friend of a friend about a year before, and as the idea of learning how to code was growing in my mind, I soon realized that the duration (2 months of intensive courses) as well as the program (fullstack bootcamp) perfectly fitted my needs. I contacted several Alumni, all very helpful, who comforted me in my decision to apply to Le Wagon.

And here I was, on January 2nd 2017, at the 16 Villa Gaudelet in Paris, discovering the 39 other students of all ages and professional backgrounds I would spend the two following months with…

You’ll see, studying at Le Wagon is rather demanding, as you will have to be perfectly focused during the morning classes if you want to understand and do the exercises successfully in the afternoon with your Buddy of the Day – especially during the first three weeks of the Bootcamp. But don’t be afraid: learning a new language following Le Wagon’s way is probably the best way to do it! Indeed, as the weeks pass on and your work assiduity stays the same, you really get stimulated by this feeling of gaining new skills every day, thanks both to the Teachers and the Teaching Assistants who are always monitoring your work and helping you when needed.

On a broader perspective, at Le Wagon, not only do you learn how to code, but it’s also a way to :

• get to meet amazing people, both alumni and fellow students,
• discover more about the start-up ecosystem through the events hosted at Le Wagon,
• and realize that as a student, you can indeed produce technically high-quality projects after only 9 weeks of coding (the last two weeks of the Bootcamp being dedicated to personal projects by groups of 3 to 4).

I probably wrote too much already, but I could follow on like this for a long time in order to convince all of you that learning how to code is probably the best decision you’ll ever make (at least it was for me), as it will open up amazing job opportunities for you, and there is definitely no better place than Le Wagon to do it !

As a CEO of my start-up, I always have to face technical challenges. After a few researches, I discover Le Wagon that supplies the perfect technical bootcamp. 9 weeks to become full-stack developper with a focus on technologies commonly used by startups.

My experience at Le Wagon Montréal was really amazing. On the one hand, it offers intense classes and challenges that allow you to understand clearly front end and back end web development. On the other hand, you share with other students from all over the world the same goal during 9 weeks; it is like a second family. In my batch #63 there were students from the US, UK, Belgium, France and of course Québec !

I highly recommend to join Le Wagon; the bootcamp could open many doors in your career path. It has been one of the most exciting experience in my life !

My background lies in sales where I first came in contact with a group of programmers in Malaysia. I was fascinated to see how a dedicated team of programmers, testers and designers were able to create a tech solution that helped companies engage with their target audience. The idea to work in a team and create a custom made solutions from scratch appealed greatly to me. Choosing Le Wagon as the place to learn how to code turned out to be a great decision.

The bootcamp is well organised by people that truly care about their students and teachers. The teaching material is phenomenal, they basically succeeded in creating a summary of the internet on how to code in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, jQuery and much more. There is a structured approach for every module, day and exercise. Everyday you team up with one of your fellow students which creates great teamspirit and group dynamics but also improves your learning curve.

The teachers are absolute specialists in their field of work and share a enthusiasm in teaching. They help you to think like a developer and look for solutions in the online documentation rather then just giving you the answers. In the final weeks of the Bootcamp you will team up in groups of three to build a web app from the ground up. This team effort is, in my opinion, one of the most important learning experience. You will have to apply most of your knowledge and work together by dividing tasks and merging changes online using Github.  

Finally, the community of alumni’s, teachers and students is truly remarkable. On the different Slack channels people share interesting articles, job opportunities, and you can ask for help with any specific problem in the #help channel. Also there are plenty of meetups where you can stay up to date on any new developments in the field of tech and also social events like wall climbing. Whether you want to become a developer, build your own product or any other reason, I would highly recommend to join Le Wagon.

Le Wagon was an incredible experience for me. I joined the course shortly after leaving school and was looking to leave with the freedom to create my own projects or pursue a career in development, that was exactly what I got. I now have the opportunity to work for Salesforce in California. 

Before the course I had a bit of knowledge on HTML and CSS after building a few simple websites for people. However, these 9 weeks totally transformed my knowledge and capabilities in web programming. 

We had a really amazing class where I made some good friends. The teachers were incredible and always gave 100%. The last 3 weeks of working in teams and building your own projects is a unique experience. After a very testing first few weeks you can't believe we actually built our own products in such a short period of time. 

I left Le Wagon with great technical skills, a great experience and I would wholeheartedly recommend Le Wagon to anyone seeking these things.

A look back at my experience at Le Wagon.

I joined Le Wagon in October 2016. Before that, I had a rather traditional background. I studied marketing in a business school then had a bunch of internships/part-time/full-time positions in the food industry. What was the trigger for me? Well, I met an alumni from Le Wagon during a Startup Weekend and we discussed about the lack of developers and my desire to be able to build my own projects without depending on "the technical guy". Following this discussion, I went to an evening talk at Le Wagon Paris office which just validated my choice of joining the program. Being stressed by nature :slightly_smiling_face: I anticipated a bit. I send a mail to Le Wagon in April, I ran the interview and had finished the ruby preparation track by May. All the lights were green, I patiently waited for the bootcamp to start and quit my job.

On 9th October, I started this crazy 9-week journey into code. Being back to school, I was a bit worried on the new things I would have to learn (I have never been a Maths person). The days were dense, very dense, but time was flying as we were learning new stuff and discovering the fascinating world of programming coding 10 jours every day. The quality of teaching and the teaching material itself are amazing, and made me keep my feet on the ground. We practiced lots of Ruby of course, but also HTML/CSS/Bootstrap, JS/jQuery, learnt how to integrate various API, and finished with 4 weeks using the awesome Rails framework.

People in my batch were great. Every day I was discovering someone new thanks to Le Wagon's "buddy system", forcing us to pair program. And besides the cold winter, we were often motivated to have a dink (maybe several!) after a challenging day of code. We organised a diner, a Christmas evening, and most importantly we helped each other every day! No one was left behind! Everyone in my batch had a different background: business school, musician, students in literature, engineers, truck driver! I hope Le Wagon will continue to mix profiles like this as it is one of the biggest strengths of the program in my opinion.

I came full of ambition, I wanted to build social networking website for sharing prayers. It was a bit unusual as a bootcamp's project but I managed to find 2 partners to code it for the last 2 weeks of the program. A great success, a kind of a condensed entrepreneurial adventure. You eat and sleep with your project in mind, you remain on slack to chat with your partners all day and night, you tend to get stressed, you argue, you celebrate when you implement a new feature, you cheer each other up until the final pitch! To sum up, I loved these 9 weeks, and especially the last two when everybody fully realized all the work that had been done the previous weeks.

While looking back at this experience, I don't have any regrets making this decision at all and I'll advice anybody wanting to learn coding to do the same.
What's next for me? As for now, I am launching a freelancing career in parallel with preparing the launch of Bless Me. 

Le Wagon was hands down one of the best experiences and investments I’ve made. Prior to Le Wagon I was working as a business analyst at a financial company. I worked with software engineers every day and I was interested in how software development is done but didn’t have the technical know-how. This inspired me to get more technical and kick start my career as a software developer.

The course absolutely surpassed all expectations I had. I feel it gave me very applicable skills and 9 weeks later I know how to build an application end to end. In addition to gaining all these skills I also got to meet a great community of entrepreneurial and fun people.

The week after bootcamp I was invited to interview at 3 companies for junior software developer positions. If you’re keen to kick start your career in software development, can’t recommend Le Wagon highly enough!

Before joining Le Wagon I studied Finance in college and accumulated several work experiences but I 've always been convinced that technologies shape the future of all industries. Also, I had a strong interest in computer related stuff and was kind of a geek. This partly explains why, after I graduated, I felt the need to gain real knowledge in the programming field. Also, I’ve always been impressed by people who were able to « talk to » computers and was kind of frustrated I couldn’t understand a damn thing when listening to them. I was eager to learn but couldn’t afford to spend several years in college again. This led me to investigate in all the possibilities which were open to me. After quite some time spent reading articles and comments I knew I wanted to enroll in a bootcamp… The only thing left was finding which one was the right fit for me. As I kept reading, I learnt more about the different technologies and began to be interested in ruby since, at the time, someone told me that my favorite website (airbnb) had been built with ruby on rails. This is how I enrolled at Le Wagon after I saw that the bootcamp had great reviews on several sites.

Now, more on the content of this bootcamp. I had a great time there and learnt a lot in a very short amount of time. The environment is very stimulating since you are gathered for 9 weeks with brilliant people with very diverse background which contributes to make the experience even better. The curriculum is rock solid and taught by teacher who « know their stuff » to say the least. The approach is very well built since it starts with core programming courses during the first 3 weeks aiming at allowing you to be able to solve problems building algorithms from scratch with ruby.

After this first block, you start learning technologies related to the front-end side of websites, which is the part of the program that the most creative people usually prefer.

Once these two first blocks completed it’s time to link everything together. This is when you start learning rails (i.e. ruby’s most popular web framework) and experimenting the construction and deployment of websites with an actual back-end.

The whole curriculum is really hands on because, let’s face it, if you want to learn programming it really is the only way. The last 3 weeks of the program are dedicated to coding in teams on projects. This is when you start relying heavily on github and understanding the prime importance of versioning your code. A week is dedicated to the construction and deployment of an airbnb clone which can be anything you want as long as it is a marketplace or something related. For the record, my team and I developed a dating website. Then, the last two weeks are dedicated to an entrepreneurial project brought by the students themselves. In fact, during the program, a day is dedicated to students’ pitches. During this day, students who have a personal project can pitch it in front of the rest of the class. After this session, following their interest, people gather in groups of 4 or 5 to develop this idea. At the end of the 9 weeks, the demo day takes place. Every group presents its project in front of physical and virtual (the demo is live streamed) spectators. A truly enjoyable moment :)

The last 3 weeks of the program were the ones where I learnt the most since you have to use each and every technology you learnt and practiced in the previous weeks.

I am really satisfied with my experience and would recommend anyone who is hesitating to enroll.

Before knowing Le Wagon I was working at Ladbrokes (gaming industry) on offering customers new products. Obviously, every new product release had to come from the IT department and from developers. But daily meetings with them wasn't easy as computer science was hard for me to understand. Therefore, for a given product I had no idea of the necessary workload and I had no credibility among external providers. My frustration was at its height…
Then, some friends told me about Le Wagon and its fast track coding course ending with a real product release. It was a good opportunity to learn quickly and in a structured way the art of coding. Besides, my colleagues and I had an idea for a new mobile game. This could be the perfect spot to build a prototype and to test its potential. 

For the first 9 weeks of 2017 I joined Le Wagon's London bootcamp and started to learn coding. It was not an easy course, everything was new. Teachers however knew they had newbies in the classroom; their pedagogy consisted of every day short theory lessons and many exercises. Coding was fun and every day was perceived as an achievement! 

Once the bootcamp was finished, I came back to Ladbrokes with a prototyped game and I also joined the IT department! I am now fully working on the development of the game, from defining its strategy to daily discussions with developers. I have gained confidence in computer science expertise and in every day discussions with the IT department.

One thing is certain; le Wagon is an incredible experience and brings you much more than only coding skills!

'Change your life, learn to code'. 
This may just sound as a good marketing tagline, but if you give yourself the means to achieve this goal, Le Wagon will come up above your expectations.

At the very beginning of my studies, I started to think about launching my own startup one day. For the past few years, the will to create something and be an entrepreneur has only grown in my mind. This idea kept flourishing when I was studying mathematics at Dauphine and then corporate finance and banking at EDHEC business school. I was lucky to work on an amazing music project « Get The Sound » with a great team, launching a broadcast channel and later on a music label.

I realized the end on my studies would be the right time to take a chance and start my company, but I was missing three important things: the team, the skills, the mindset. I got the right mindset by myself through reading, meetups, programs such as « Lion » by TheFamily. This is how I heard about Le Wagon, and I was convinced it was exactly what I needed for the next steps. 

Starting in January 2017, it has been a life changing experience to me: not only Le Wagon kept its promises to bring me valuable technical skills to be able to make my ideas come true, but it was also a great human experience where I got to meet amazing people gathering from all horizons. Le Wagon gave me the tools to be able to learn by myself and to continue to move forward. It also provided me a great startup network, and a killer team. I am now launching my batch project, The Good Gift, with two friends met at Le Wagon: Alexandre and François. Besides, I am coding a website for Get The Sound, and I will be Teaching Assistant for the next batch. On a day to day basis, I can also benefit from the hyperactive Le Wagon's community. 

So if you're ready to change your life and work hard to achieve your goals, go for it. Once you're on board, Le Wagon won't stop taking you further…