Le Wagon

As a Product Owner working with developers, I’d always been curious about programming languages. I had learned some HTML in business school then some CSS on Codecademy 
but it didn’t quite feed my curiosity. So after 4 years as a product owner, I decided to take a gap semester from work to finally learn to code!
As a good business student, I studied the market to evaluate my options and rapidly two programs stood out. I reached out to alumni from both programs and that’s when Le Wagon became an evidence; an evidence because of its community and its network! Alumni were super available to answer my questions and gave me tons of advice.
The 9 weeks were amazing and went by so fast. Everyday I got to learn new ways of thinking, discover new concepts and take on new challenges. I really enjoyed the program schedule (and yoga classes). This experience taught me a lot and brought me the confidence to basically do anything!
Indeed my plan is now to move to the south of France soon where I’ll settle as a Fullstack Developer (either in a company or as a freelance).

The Wagon is one of the most fulfilling experience of my life.
At le Wagon, we don’t just learn code, we learn why we do it and how to do it right.
The spirit is awesome, the teachers adapt themselves to each and every student, so no one is left behind.

I can’t believe the experience I gain in only 9 weeks. I feel I have a backbone now and I don’t feel ashamed to call myself a developer, thanks to le Wagon.

The fun thing is when you’re there, you’re not just part of a batch, you just have been welcomed in a big family (a 4000 people family). A family which support each other, raise each other and understand each other.

The 9 weeks program is like a marathon but inside a formula 1. You know it’s long and hard but when you watch where you came from, you can’t realize how far you get in just few weeks.

Now I’m at the beginning of my new career, I know I still have a lot to learn (and I will learn all my life) but one thing is sure, I am not afraid.

If you’re still asking the question, should I leave that job which makes me feel miserable, don’t hesitate anymore, take that leap, you won’t regret it.

Before Le Wagon I was working in Ad Tech in London, hacking together automated advertising solutions for clients using Google sheets, Zapier and any other 3rd party solutions that required no coding ability.

Doing this I eventually started to realise that there were massive opportunities I couldn’t take advantage of because I couldn’t code, which is why I decided to join Le Wagon.

Le Wagon Bali itself was incredible. Despite the tremendous amounts you learned each week the teachers had an incredible impact on the overall mood. The teacher to student ratio and the ticket system meant you never had to wait too long for a ticket to be solved and if a teacher needed to sit with you for a few hours to explain something, they could!

On the course I met people from all different walks of life and this definitely inspired me to consider opportunities I would not have previously. And I couldn’t have wished for a nicer group of people and I feel like I have definitely made some lifelong friends.

Also being in Bali is incredible. Everytime you get stressed or frustrated you can have a look at the ocean from the classroom or go down to the beach or even visit one of the many (many) great coffee shops. And Le Wagon worked really hard to organise trips on free weekends so you could make the most of being in paradise.

Le Wagon not only gave me a great toolbox of coding languages but also taught me how I could teach myself more languages. A lot of the focus was on self-learning and preparing you for when you don’t have a teacher by your side. This was especially true for final project week. Being able to take my own idea to a fully fledged progressive web app over the course of the last 10 days and be able to present it to a room full of people was probably one of my proudest achievements.

Now that I have finished Le Wagon I am currently considering whether to take a job at an exciting new startup or try to realise some of my own business ideas, but whatever I end up doing, I’m sure the learning doesn’t stop now.

I’m an entrepreneur since 2014 and I enrolled at Le Wagon Paris at the end of 2018 for 9 amazing weeks. It was one of the most intense and great experiences of the last few years. You can completely trust them to benefit from a bootcamp very well structured, teached by strong professors and teaching assistants, and with moments of fun and cheerfulness.
Last year, I wanted to create a new project, in line with my company. This project is a booking plateform 100% online and 100% automatized, which needs a powerful app. As I had no skills or even 0 knowledge in coding, I first thought to subcontract the creation of the app. By subcontracting I would have “lost control” of the production, what I didn’t want to do. Then I discovered Le Wagon and told myself it could be amazing to learn to code in only 9 weeks. This is an essential skill if you want to create a startup. Not only to code yourself, but also to be able to understand what the developers do. If you want to discover this world, jump on a big challenge, gain new skills and open job opportunities, I really recommend you Le Wagon :)

I completed Le Wagon Full Stack Bootcamp end of 2018 in Paris, this course is well structured and balanced, adapting to your level. For the record, I had no previous code experience. 

Over 9 intense weeks, I learned how to program in Ruby and structure Web Application. This course gave me all the key foundation about programming and how to be autonomous in learning about code. 

I can only recommend this course, the staff and their learning method is exceptional. 

I started to be interested in coding a few of years ago while travelling. After meeting many inspiring developers in hostels, who were working remotely while travelling and making good money. At the time I never really considered myself technically minded enough or able to sit at a computer for long enough to be able to make this a career. I decided to give it a go, and took some online courses. I loved it. Before then I didn't realise that coding is a an excellent job for creative people. 

As I started to go deeper into coding I realised that the online videos and challenges I was doing were not enough. I heard about coding bootcamps while travelling in Australia and went to a few open days to find out more. I did some more research upon arriving back in Barcelona and came across Le Wagon. Not only was it rated as the highest bootcamp in Europe, but the fact that it was aimed at creative people and those looking to 'Change your life, learn to code'. It seemed to be the best fit for me. 

I remembered that I had a friend who did the same bootcamp in Lisbon the year before and asked him what he thought. I read some articles on Medium that confirmed that. I booked meetings with various other bootcamps in Barcelona just to be sure. Compared to the other options for bootcamps I felt that Le Wagon was more personable, more international and would provide me with the most value for what I wanted to do - change my life and learn to code. Gus didn't spam me with emails not try to convince me to take the course in our meeting, he seemed to want the course to be a good fit for both of us. And so I booked up and a month later I had my first class.

The school was bright and open which I found to be a reflection of the people who filled it. No two people were the same, each with their own story and reasons for learning to code. The focus of the first day was for us to get to know one another and get our computers set up and ready for the following weeks. Each day we would be randomly assigned another student as a buddy and were encouraged to help one another, rather than just asking a teachers help each time. I really enjoyed having the chance to work with and get to know the other students well, and I think it really made an impact on the overall friendly, positive vibe of the whole experience. 

We would learn a new topic for a couple of hours in the morning and spend the rest of the day with our buddy tackling practical exercises to help us understand and see how and why to use the new information. We were encouraged to be independent and find answers on our own or with our buddy before asking a teacher for help, which is a great habit to pick up early on in our coding careers. 

The last 3 weeks were almost entirely practical as we formed groups and created two different applications, from thinking about the reason for the app, to building the 'user story' and flow, to the design and planning, building the web app and finally presenting our finished product. We did all that using the knowledge we had just learned in the past 6 weeks plus some added extras in the morning lectures. It felt great to be able to show off our apps to friends and family at the end of the bootcamp and feel the sense of accomplishment within our group. Not only that but we are able to add these apps to our CV's, along with all our new skills. Gus helped us to spruce up our LinkedIn profiles and CV's, and we had presentations from recruiters to alumni giving us tips on the next steps for life after the bootcamp. As well as the extra resources, courses and lifetime access to all the lectures and exercises from the bootcamp we have the added bonus of the Le Wagon Alumni slack channel with more than 4000 people posting help, job offers and giving access to this worldwide community of coders.

I am now on the other side of the bootcamp with some interviews lined up and I have started building my website portfolio plus a new app idea of my own. I would not have been able to do this had it not been for Le Wagon's bootcamp and the help and support of Gus and the team here in Barcelona. I would recommend the Le Wagon bootcamp to anyone, but most especially in Barcelona, where we have sunshine almost every day and different fun events every weekend, it was great to have a whole new group of friends to enjoy this beautiful city (and make hilarious coding jokes with!!!). Good luck future coder!

I was working as a music composer & audio engineer. Considering the evolution of the music industry, I decided to learn code to survive this tough jungle in the future. Le Wagon was naturally my first choice to begin this new adventure, and it was above my expectations. The quality of the pedagogy is very high. This chackra opening experience was beyond just learning code: I met very interesting people and joined an amazing family.

After graduating last summer in Paris, I worked for Le Wagon as a Teaching Assistant in Paris, Berlin, Casablanca & Shanghai. That was such an enriching experience. Then and I found a full-time job within only 4 months, as a front-end developer (Vue.js) in my dream city. This new job is quite challenging but I was surprised how quickly I was able to adapt, thanks to the methodoligy I learnt at Le Wagon. It's more about learning how learn, which is the most useful tool in a developer journey.

I strongly recommend Le Wagon, without any hesitation!

Le Wagon FullStack program that I attended last summer was a unique experience for three reasons :

- First because of its very ambitious developer training scope : one doesn’t learn how to use already made coding tools, that could get obsolete quickly, but rather the logic behind them in a thorough bottom’s up approach (just look at the training programme, it speaks for itself). And still, all levels of developers make their way through the intense formation, from the absolute beginner to the somehow initiated and already keen developer. And it applies to you whether you want to become a developer, a product owner, an entrepreneur, etc.

- Second because the formation has a very smart “hands on” approach following the “learn by doing” principle. A short and sweet lecture session every morning - for approximately an hour and half - and then, code, code, code....  And because everyone works in pairs and is also supported by a great team of knowledgeable Teaching Assistants, you are never alone in front of your screen.

- Third, a business and project oriented approach : because Le Wagon founders don’t want you to think just code, but also business : who is your customer? What problem do you solve? What is your unique value proposition? How do you design it and prototype you web application? And then, how do you code it all up as a team? And when you think you are almost done, you have to present it to the world during demo day! There are some great examples of demo days on the web, watch them, they are real!

I received great feedback about Le Wagon before attending the bootcamp and knew it corresponded to what I was looking for. So I jumped into it. And it turned out to be even better than I anticipated.

Get ready for an intense session, this is not just a walk in the park, it requires your full attention. And in the end, you will be so pleased with Le Wagon experience and you will have met some great people along the way.

Happy coding journey !

12 month before starting le Wagon Bali in Jan 2019, I was running a promising start-up that just raised 300 K€ seed fund, team of 5 full time people, great investors and located in the largest European start up hub in Paris, Station F. We had just launched a marketplace of craftmen and craftwoman in fashion, mainly focused on dressmakers. KPI were looking good and before launching we already had hundreds of dressmakers, interest from customers, to make it short we had our first traction. From a tech side I had no knowledge in tech and after a quick benchmark on the French market we decided to choose an agency based in Lyon that develops “The only all-in-one solution for creating your marketplace” (as they call themselves) and pay annual fees to use there “easy to use” marketplace solution… no need to say that was the worst idea I ever had.

The worst decision I ever made

Not only this solution was very expensive (40K€ / year), but also It would take us a week (in the best case) or two to have a button moved (basic CSS and HMTL, now I know J ). When you are launching a new tech business, the first thing you learn from every entrepreneur book is the fact you have to iterate every single day according to user feedback. Well, we had it all, Trello feedback loop, public roadmap, users/dressmakers regular test, full time internal product owner… but the so called “web agency” was facing a peak of work at that moment and would take care of our requests in the best case after 10 days which is an eternity at start-up scale. We were not even asking new features, no back-end, but basics front-end. But worse we had not opportunity to change any back-end function at all. We finally had to pay freelance developers to at least improve User Interface and do the work quicker, which started to cost a lot of money to us. After 9 months like that we eventually ran out of money and could not afford a second year of annual fees (and we didn’t want to carry on with them anyway). The traction was not going fast enough to raise a second round of seed money, technology was not even ours, so we didn’t even have anything to sell. We decided to kill the project. In September 2018, I was by myself no more team, deeply in depth with banks (BPI), my associate had left the business and I was about to close the business.

When I decided to join Le Wagon.

After couple of weeks of back and forth I finally decided to maintain the business by myself, doing some marketing freelance to make money and made the decision to join le Wagon for the January batch. I thought, as I failed my project due to my lack of knowledge in technology I should do something about it. What was the learning I could get from this experience? The answer was definitely making my main 2018 drawback, a 2019 strength by learning how to code asap. A coding boothcamp was the answer ! I already had friends that had been through Le Wagon and just loved the experience, choosing Le Wagon was a no brainer. However I was not making enough money to join le Wagon Paris and live in Paris for two months without freelancing at all. This is when I decided to pick the most exciting AND cheapest cost of life destination where Le Wagon had a campus… BALI, Indonesia.

I had buried my project already.

I was not proud about the project I failed, I felt guilty and I kept thinking I could have done better… I had wasted so much money. It was difficult for me to get over it and even though I kept telling myself failure makes success, being raised in French culture where failure is not really valued it was not easy. Not because of people or friends who were very supportive, but just me…

Honestly running away from Paris and learning code in Bali was some kind of escape, but I really wanted to gain knowledge on how people do business in other cultures. Being in Paris, at Station F at the heart of the French entrepreneurship was great but I wanted to learn from other entrepreneurs outside Paris and outside France. I didn’t really knew what I could expect but I didn’t want to hear about marketplaces and dressmakers anymore.

2019, new year new challenges!

I finally made it to Le Wagon Bali and I had the chance to be part of such a crazy team of Le Wagon Batch #217 with whom I almost spent 24/7 during 2 month. 18 people (teachers included) coming from all over the world (Brazil, UK, Ireland, Korea, Indonesia, USA, Italia, India, France, Thailand, Germany). Everyone had such a great story to share and such a great experience I could learn from. I felt blessed to be in the middle of such a diverse melting pot. During the boothcamp I finally had the great pleasure the re-code from scratch that project I failed last year thanks to an amazing international team (Korea, Ireland and UK) who really believed in this project. We even presented it during our demoday. A month after the end of the boothcamp we are now about to test it in Korea, Japan, UK and South America.

Not only the Le Wagon Bali brought me knowledge on how to code my marketplace my-self but I also had the opportunity to share 2 month of my life in an intensive yet immersive experience. This great team of international people really helped me getting over my recent episode turning it into a strength. Not sure about the outcome of my project yet, but it doesn’t really matter. That was the best therapy and the best entrepreneurial lesson I ever had.

I joined Le Wagon in pursuit of a long term goal: to become a developer. I’d spent time trying to complete online tutorials with varied success. I then spent nine weeks immersed in a fun environment, with peers on the same journey as me, supported by some of the best tutors I’ve had the pleasure of working with. I learned more than I thought I could.

Le Wagon isn’t just about teaching you to code. The curriculum is rounded as such that what you learn is totally applicable to anyone who wants to work in product development. It provides you with the knowledge and resources to be able to create awesome digital products whether that be pitching, design, user experience and more.

Le Wagon is a big commitment. For me it was a big step to leave a job to go back into education but my advice is just do it, and the sooner the better! The bootcamp is not easy, but it’s so rewarding.

I leave Le Wagon able to pursue a career as a developer, with a new set of friends with whom I’ve shared an incredible journey and a community of developers to call upon for support. I say leave, Le Wagon’s never really over, I’ll be seeing everyone for beers this Friday ;)

My name is Patrick, I studied entrepreneurship and I’m now pursuing my entire career in freelance.
I work happily as a Product Owner, Product Manager or Change Management consultant.

I had been in a tech environment for a while now, from which I was missing the codes (no pun intended!). The more I dove into technical projects and the more I became frustrated not being able to access the code and fix minor bugs myself. Moreover, in order to write and document issues for the developers, I spent a lot of time reading and listening to technical stuff that I didn’t understand fully. Common sense can only bring you so far, sooner or later you end up saying something stupid to a developer’s ears and wasting everyone’s time.

I knew I could find all I wanted to learn online, however those links had been sitting in my favs for a while and deep down I knew I would never get to it. I needed someone to kick my ass into learning to code. That’s why I chose Le Wagon.

The most important thing Le Wagon brought me was inner peace: since the training I feel a lot more legitimate and I can gain the developers’ trust more easily because we have some common grounds.

I am very satisfied with the training. Le Wagon gave me a good technical background that allows me to participate in software architecture decisions, access and search the database, facilitate bug tracking and most preciously understand developers’ work with all its inherent frustration, pain and joy.

Before joining Le Wagon bootcamp I had tried many things studing medecin, then dentistry, and ended up in a business school. I quit each time. After this, I spent six months doing almost nothing apart from thinking of what I could do, what work I could love doing in the future, that brought me to candidate to Le Wagon.

After the first day of bootcamp, I knew coding would be a source of joy for me and I was sure I made the right choice. During the 9 weeks of the bootcamp, I met amazing people who I will keep in touch with and developed tremendous coding skills relative to the time I spent learning (I’d never written a single line of code before). The whole bootcamp has been an amazing experience, and a game changer for my future.

I’m currently continuing work on the final project we pitched and developed during the last 10 days of the bootcamp. Whether it works, or it fails, I’ll keep coding and keep learning everything I can about coding. This is my new universe now, I love it, and I’ve been introduced to it in a perfect way with le Wagon!