Le Wagon

Attending Le Wagon in London (batch #222) is one of the best career decisions I have ever made. Having the interest in programming and data, I have been scouting around different coding schools in the city. I have previously attended Flat Iron’s part-time course but wasn’t getting much out of it as they lack teaching support in the London campus and the syllabus wasn’t ready when they launched in the summer of 2018.

The bootcamp life isn’t easy but Le Wagon has the best resources. They have a closely-knit network where everyone genuinely enjoy programming and the community is their key to success. The instructor, TAs, and staff go above and beyond to help you and pay close attention to everyone’s progress and guide us through the journey. The first weeks of bootcamp was really difficult - lecture started at 9 sharp everyday and we worked on various problem sets for the rest day until 5:30 when we started live coding (the lead teacher will pick one student to code in front of the class and of course providing guidance as well). Our typical day ends around 6:30/7pm depending on the workload and it was mentally and physically challenging. After 9 weeks of intense learning, we’re equipped with working knowledge of a junior developer.

Overall, my time at Le Wagon was extremely rewarding and enjoyable. I would not hesitate to recommend anyone who’s considering a career change to tech.

I was the « Marketing guy » for more than 6 years in a startup I co-founded and it was sometimes (a lot of times) frustrating not to be able to understand my co-founders dev problems. That’s why I always wanted to learn how to code. At first, I wasn’t sure Le Wagon was the best choice for me as I still didn’t now if I wanted to fully change career (I still find Marketing really interesting and important).

After discussing with a distant friend who did Le Wagon and talking to the Le Wagon Paris team, I decided to take the leap and attend Le Wagon batch #177 in Paris and boy was it a good idea. I have never experienced such a perfect learning experience (I’ve tried to learn to code online by myself at least 10 times):
- The program is great. Focusing on practice over theory. The exercices are challenging enough but not to difficult so you don’t fall behind.
- The buddy system is perfect: You work with a new person everyday. This allows you to meet everyone and to better learn as you explain the problems to each other.
- The numerous TAs and staffs are there to help you along the way.

What amazed me was the constant care of the team to see if everyone is following the course and all the extra perks to create a great atmosphere between the students (events, lunches, yoga, meet your buddies, …).

Of course, this comes with a cost (both in terms of finance and time) but it is well worth it. I highly recommend it.

Deciding to attend Le Wagon Montreal was one of the best career decisions that I've ever made. 

Like everyone else, I had the option of choosing from various other bootcamps making all sorts of claims, and honestly, I was just looking for a well-reputed coding school that would be effective at teaching and was easy on the wallet. I also did not want to feel cheated out of my money after completing the course, so I began looking up bootcamp after bootcamp and I took my time to look up online-reviews. It was during my research that I discovered Le Wagon. Every person that I've reached out to regarding Le Wagon were all RAVING with positive reviews. Every review I read spoke of an amazing experience that sounded incredible. I couldn't believe it. Every single review? How could it be? My interests deepened as I went to their website and continued to search through-out their curriculum. Something about Le Wagon stood out to me. It felt more entrepreneurially-oriented than the others, which was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to feel empowered with skills and knowledge that I would be able to use from home and also be equipped with all the tools that I would need. I did not want to simply be able to go job hunting after completing the course. I wanted to be able to start projects on my own. And that is when it happened... The Decision. I chose Le Wagon and it changed my life.

The benefits you get with Le Wagon are real-world necessities. If you have absolutely no coding experience or background, Le Wagon is the bootcamp for you. They provide you with LIFETIME assistance on their KITT platform, and yes, the Alumni and Teachers are active on there. You will have access to valuable information, be able to review information you may have forgotten and discover so much more about the world of coding. They even provide a Career Playbook for you to follow if you decide to make coding a career and they keep you informed about possible job openings and opportunities, whenver available.

The culture at Le Wagon MTL is amazing. We did activities together, went out to eat and drank with each other and even did yoga (I've never done yoga before this). We also have Happy Hours on Fridays when we drank beer and ate pizza. We even sang Happy Birthday for students whose birthdays were during the course. I really felt like a part of the Le Wagon MTL family and community, and that's priceless for students. It is like I always have someone that I can reach out to, if I'm ever in need of help. I am never alone, being part of the Le Wagon. And oh, before I forget... if you enjoy a hot cup of coffee in the morning, Le Wagon offers unlimited cups of coffee. YAY for me.

The bootcamp itseft is intense, so it may feel difficult in the first couple of weeks, but please trust the process. They have a curriculum that builds you in every aspect, not simply teaching you how to code. They provide you with everything you need to succeed and I urge you to take full advantage of everything they will recommend. On KITT, you will have access to Flash Cards to study after class to help you retain what you've learned and alsohave access to pre-recorded videos previewing the next day's lecture. The TA's (Teacher Assistants) are knowledgeable and they enjoy what they do. What I love the most is that, if you're stuck on a challenge and have a question, once you put in a ticket, they won't just utter the answer to your question. They push you to think and develop a way of thinking that will be of benefit to you in more ways than just coding.  In doing so, Le Wagon provides the skills that prepare you for the real-world, such as problem-solving skills and product management and design. You really learn a lot about yourself. I've pushed myself in ways I never imagined. I interviewed a speaker that came to one of the Wagon Talks (it is voluntary), and I also had to pitch an idea, code it from scratch and present it on Demo-Day... our final day of the bootcamp, in front a huge audience.

The working space at Le Wagon MTL is awesome. The people are very polite and treat everyone with respect and it is about 10mins of walking distance from the nearest metro station. They have great food available within walking distance as well.

In a nutshell, Le Wagon is more than a 9 week coding bootcamp. Le Wagon is a community of friendly coders you can always count on.

Being in my early 40's, I considered that I needed to get hands on into coding in order to be more "digital aware" for the rest of my career. This is the reason why I decided to attend to Le Wagon's coding bootcamp.

What I found there perfectly suited my needs: in 2.5 months, I went from no knowledge at all in coding, to a good understanding on how to build a fully functional website, and how all the mechanics behind it works.

These guys at Le Wagon have been very good at designing a great, intensive program, supported by a good technical infrastructure, where you can learn, meet great people and have fun altogether!

I strongly recommand for those who wish to really become more digital savvy or to launch a career in coding.

Before joining Le Wagon at its Full Stack Bootcamp, I was a Management Consultant with a business and finance background and no programming skills whatsoever. Despite enjoying all the different projects and challenges that Consulting brought me over the last 5 years, I was not focusing on one of my life goals, which was to build and develop my own projects and ideas.

In order to fulfil this objective, I was lacking the necessary technical skills that were essential to setup a number of my own ideas, thus I decided to take a sharp 180º turn on my Consulting career and opt in on a tech oriented / web development bootcamp.

Le Wagon was without a doubt the best possible choice I could have made and provided me with a life-changing experience. From the well-structured curriculum and its supporting resources, to the highly knowledgeable and always helpful teaching staff / worldwide community, Le Wagon was with no doubt an extremely positive experience that vastly surpassed all my expectations.

There are several aspects of the bootcamp that make it an excellent choice (such as the ones mentioned above). However, the one I would refer to as the most prominent one would be the fast pace environment and the high-level exercises and challenges that are available, as these will most definitely ensure that you either "learn or learn" the topics at hand.

After 9 weeks of bootcamp, I am now 100% independent in setting up new tech ideas from top to bottom, as Le Wagon provided me with all the necessary tools to do just that. In summary, I would unquestionably recommend Le Wagon to anyone keen on learning to code, for both the technical skills that are gained throughout the course and the enthusiastic and supportive worldwide community.

Before Le Wagon I was working as a teacher. Even though I really like teaching, I needed a bigger challenge. So, after a lot of research I decided to join Le Wagon in Lisbon.

Le Wagon does exactly what it promises you : “Change your life, learn to code”. After 9 very intensive weeks of coding my life was definitely not the same. During these 9 weeks you’re fully immersed on learning how to think like a programmer. You’ll even dream about it.  One of the best aspects of the bootcamp is that we obviously learn theory, but it’s so much more focused on practice, over and over again, with trial and error, until you get it right. And you have alongside you amazing teachers that take the time to make you understand your errors and code with them. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

The last two weeks of the bootcamp are to build a product in a group from scratch. It is great working in a team towards building a product. You learn on how to be organized in your team of developers and how to work on a team.

Le Wagon was an amazing experience. I feel like it’s exactly what someone needs if they want to become a developer. You definitely learn by doing.

From a business background, I’ve always had a profound interest in the tech world. I started working in a startup in Singapore as Growth Marketer. Although I enjoyed this position, I realized that ultimately — no matter how good your marketing strategy is — it always starts with having a great product. For this reason, I decided to move into a Product Manager position to get closer to the product and have a bigger impact on its strategy. This position has been an eye-opener for me as I enjoyed the broad scope of activities that it covers (from customers interviews down to execution and product releases).
However, it also brought my tech skills limitations to light, and I felt frustrated at some point not being able to dive deep enough into the product development issues with my fellow engineers' colleagues.
It is for this very reason that I applied to Le Wagon to gain the tech skills needed to flourish into a Product Manager position.
9 weeks down the road I’m feeling much more confident with my coding skills and decided to start building my own web app — a content-curation tool for Product Managers — as a side project.

In short, Le Wagon has been a life-changing experience for me for the following 3 reasons:

* It totally demystifies web development
* It gives the self-confidence needed to start building my own project
* It gives the opportunity to be part of a great community with various background united around a common passion for tech.

Before LeWagon bootcamp, I worked as an engineer and quality manager in Brazil, doing a lot of manual and repetitive stuff. I already knew it was possible to make things easier with automation and I was interested in learn properly how to do it for many years.

Starting LeWagon Lisbon, in an international environment, was one of the best choice I made so far. Great team of teachers and assistants. You will never be alone during the journey ! The program and the platform are really intensive but perfectly designed to give the students all they need to understand and learn as quick as possible. There is so much extra-content that it’s almost impossible to see everything. You also have access to the huge and super active alumni’s community to help you in the future.

I can only encourage anyone who is looking for a coding bootcamp, learn how to code and change his life; to join LeWagon’s family and the fullstack web developer bootcamp.

Le Wagon truly delivered a course that is life changing – quite literally giving you a skillset that can change your life.

I joined Bali Batch #217 having extremely little tech experience. I have been working as a professional chef since the age of 16, using my mac just for photo editing, menu planning and some movie editing for the last 15 years.
I started coding after being introduced to it by an engineer I worked with, who had a similar logical problem solving approach as I do.

After completing the prep work, I joined my classmates in our classroom looking over the beautiful balinese coastline.
I had no illusions as to how fast-paced and tough it would be, but before the end of the first week, I was ready to throw the towel in.
Guido and the team quickly resolved the issues, investing faith into the program, the teachers and the T.A’s.

I completed the course showcasing a complex web app, knowing how to pitch products, code to a high level and ready to be an asset to my next employer.

The biggest compliment I can give to the bootcamp is it works.
Behind the door, Guido and Dirk made everything flow seamlessly. The teachers and T.A’s are at the top of their game (with amazing skills that make me insanely jealous) but beyond all of that they are on your side – having all been in your shoes and spurring you on to grow, bringing the best out in every student.

Invest in yourself and join the bootcamp – you won’t regret it!

I was working as a banker for a couple of years already, but all my life I've been struggling with finding my real career path. That answer has never been easy to me, and with time I started feeling interested in programming. I did some research in Google in order to find where I could get deep into the field and there it was Le Wagon with its intensive programme, which hooked me right away. I digged a little further so I could consider other options, but after seeing lots of excellent reviews, its positioning in specialized magazines bootcamp's rankings, and talking with former students, the decision was very clear and so I chose Le Wagon for this new career path. I was looking to change careers and couldn't expect spending too much time in the process. I wanted to learn, fast, and be able to start working with it as soon as possible. I had the motivation, so their high promises in terms of skills-to-gain, fast-paced learning curve, and product-oriented programme was a perfect match for me.

During my time, there were lots of things to remark. But if I would have to choose a few, I would say that actually having the feeling of wanting to wake up early every time to go the course it's something that never happened to me before, which I welcomed gratefully. Moreover, the atmosphere was just amazing, all the group was completely focused an helping each other, as everyone came with the same goal, which motivated and encouraged me to keep working and do better every time. Furthermore, the teachers were completely capable and the agile methodology was also a very solid point of the bootcamp: Lectures lasted long enough (not more than 2hs) and the rest of the time was spent in solving challenges, which made it easier and clearer to learn, but mainly WAY MORE FUN. Last but no least, leaving the bootcamp with an actual product in your hands, building it from scratch, it's a more than useful experience and advantage for future job opportunities.

Being based in Barcelona was just the perfect plus for me. The weather is great, the city is beautiful, you are close to the beach and the mountains, you can find people from all over the world, and there is a huge variety of options for either day and night life.

So to sum up (and I guess if you read this far you already know this), I would definitely recommend Le Wagon and Barcelona! I have to admit that making this investment was not an easy decision, but I do not regret it at all, it was definitely one of my best experiences ever. For you guys, if you are certain about your interest in programming, then this is the bootcamp to choose. My advice for you is to be really commited to work hard those weeks, specially in the first ones when eveything starts getting a little confusing; but do not despair! In the end things will workout and wou will feel rewarded, with lots of new skills, and a new fresh product to feel proud of.