Le Wagon

At the end of my studies in business school, I had as project to become product manager, but I didn't have the skills that allow me to communicate and understand the technical teams. That's why I joined le wagon that seemed to me the best option to achieve this goal. A short training, intense and covering all the concepts necessary to be a good product manager. My choice is quickly proven to be the right one, the methodology makes us quickly rise in competences, the structure of the courses is innovating, and allows everyone to advance to the same level. So these are two months that have not only been a period of training, but also a human adventure that opens doors and mind, where we do not imagine learn as much.

I have done the bootcamp in Paris in 2017 (Batch #100) and those are 9 weeks I'll never forget. I have learned so much about programming, product development and entrepreneurship in 9 weeks. In addition to that le wagon is a really awesome community full of inspiring and welcoming people. Being an alumni is really nice because of all the perks and activities that continue beyond the bootcamp. I would strongly advise anyone seriously interested in programming to enroll in le Wagon's bootcamp. 

Before deciding on Le Wagon Tokyo I had scoured course report and quora for bootcamp recommendations, and procrastinated on which bootcamp to choose for over two years. It's practically impossible to know which bootcamp to go with when they all have 5-start reviews, but let me outline why I was so glad I went with Le Wagon and why it may also be the bootcamp for you.

Simply put, the value they deliver is incredible for the price you pay. At only 9 weeks, you might question whether it's enough time to truly 'master' full-stack development. Well, the truth is you won't master full-stack development whichever bootcamp you take because that takes years and years of working in a real job. If this is what puts you off then don't let it, because you gain everything you need to get going in those 9 weeks. What you learn in the first 6 weeks is enough of an overview of the main areas - server-side programming in ruby, front-end html and css, databases, javascript and ruby on rails - to actually build impressive products. In the 3 final weeks you form teams and build products which is exactly what you need to be doing - not languishing in months of prep work before you actually build anything as other bootcamps might have you doing.

Here it is worth mentioning that the quality of the curriculum is really impressive. Having worked as a teacher for over 10 years, I am used to seeing poorly produced teaching materials, but LWs are totally on point. Each exercise is described well and has tests to check your code works correctly, and there are extensions so you'll always have more to come back to to hone your skills even after you finish the bootcamp, as well as a free course on the popular javascript frontend framework React. There were also teaching assistants on hand for when you and your partner got stuck, and they were always totally capable and helpful.

Now I have to mention the other big thing that sets Le Wagon apart from the competition - they coach you on product design, pitching, and developing a minimum viable product from scratch. I've heard of another popular coding camp on here where the final demo day was a disaster because the products produced were so poorly conceived. This wouldn't happen at Le Wagon because of the continuous feedback they give you on your products, and because they make you pitch your product multiple times before the public demo day so you have a lot of opportunities to refine it.

In my case, I pitched an educational product that I'd wanted to build for ages before I came to the bootcamp, and actually got voted for by my classmates and so was able to build it. The whole thing was an incredible experience of turning what was just an idea in my head, into a concrete and valuable product. Now the bootcamp is over LW are giving me advice about how to continue developing my product and launching it as a start up. There is also a huge community of alumni from past batches and you get automatic membership to slack channels where you can continue to network and get notified of jobs in your city and around the world.

Overall, I was left with an impression of a company with integrity who deeply care about what they are doing, who are not just in it to make a quick buck, and who have become one of the most popular bootcamps in the world because they are offering so much value. I feel like the team in Tokyo of Doug, Sylvain and Paul were particularly awesome, but I'm confident that you'll experience a similar degree of awesomeness wherever you take it.

Final note: I put 'not applicable' for job assitance because job interview coaching and introductions to recruiters are not part of the official program, and could differ based on locaiton. In Tokyo, LW did however give us a ton of help and resources for help with landing our first job including introductions to recruiters, how to write our resume, posts about networking events (post bootcamp also), and one-to-one advice on any job offers we had.

• Buenos Aries is a new location for Le Wagon (first batch in mid 2018)
• The maturity of the Buenos Aries program is there. I would 100% recommend taking Le Wagon in BA or anywhere around the world (My worry was that since BA was such a new location for Le Wagon that it might not have had all the kinks worked out. The truth is that the founders train all instructors so well you can’t go wrong with any of their locations.)
• The lead instructor for this course is Sebastain Sempe who has incredible patience and is a talented teacher. Also a shoutout to Sam Levy the TA who was incredible!)
• The student to teacher ratio is 1 to 4 which worked well. (I never felt like I had to wait long to get help on questions)
• The program is intense (60 hours in class a week, but it's totally doable)
• It’s all in English. You need to be fluent in English to take this program.
• Take the pre work seriously and try and time it so that you finish the pre work right before the program starts (if you start the pre work too early you will forget most of what you learned. The course moves so quickly that any extra work you do before the camp will help make some of the concepts familiar) 
• No bootcamp will make you a coder straight out of the camp. You can reasonably get a job 2 - 6 months out (you will need to practice and work on your own projects)
• This bootcamp focuses on Ruby (Ruby on Rails is the framework, you will also learn CSS, HTML, JavaScript and some SQL) Don’t get to caught up in the debate of wether you should take a bootcamp that focuses on Java Script or Python rather then Ruby. It’s true that Ruby is not as popular as it used to be but it’s probably the easiest langue to learn (also it’s a very powerful, probably the best langue for create MVPs). Coding is already hard as it. Staring in Ruby is a smart thing because of its user friendlies. You can move into less friendly languages after the bootcamp if you like coding.

 

I took place in #batch 213, Bordeaux, France @ Le Wagon after finding out about it from a friend who had taken part in winter 2018 Paris program. I will never look back on this experience. It has given me so much confidence, inspired me to love learning and hard work, especially within a team, and finally to take ownership for my own progress. I entered the batch as perhaps the least likely to fit the stereotype or profile of a web developer or a coder, I was the youngest and I was the only foreigner (half English and Spanish, but thankfully fluent in French!) This did not stop me from putting myself out there, and I managed to pitch a successful project that we created in the last 2 weeks of the 9-week program. My group of 4 developed 'Concierge At Sea', an app to improve clients' experience renting super yachts, and to facilitate an easier working day for the crew managing their guests' needs. I did not expect to make such genuine friends on this course, and the profile of those who I worked alongside surprised me daily as we were shuffled between buddies. The course is structured, empowering and totally worth every penny. I thoroughly recommend anyone sitting on the fence to take the step and go for this!

https://www.lewagon.com/fr/bordeaux 

Before Le Wagon I was working as a digital marketer. I got bored and decided to do something else. I’ve been interested in computer programming my whole life and so I decided to join Le Wagon. This bootcamp had the best reputation in Paris and in the world so the choice was easy for me.

Joining Le Wagon was one of the best choice I’ve made in my life. It helped me gain technical skills but I also met amazing people. I would recommend it to anyone.

And if you’re afraid that you won’t find a job after it: 2 weeks after the end of my batch I found a job as a Fullstack developer in a brand new startup (and I’m not the only one..) !

 I enjoyed my time at LeWagon, in Tokyo.  I had previous experience in the website design, so the front-end was not hard, but the back-end was hard, especially the first couple of weeks, when it was all Ruby.   But you can ask the teachers and the TAs to get you through the exercises - they are there to help!  I'd think there are at least two in every batch that can be ahead of everyone else because of their skills or their previous backgrounds, but don't get stressed over in completing all the exercises - you don't need to complete all in one day - you can come back to the exercises later.  
Also, one teacher was nice enough to talk to us about it.  If you are strong in front-end, don't stress yourself into being a full-stack developer.  You will have access to exercises even after completing LeWagon.  
If there is one con to talk about, it is the management of the final project, simply because at least in our batch, it was never discussed.  Creating a nice work schedule (two weeks is tough though) would be a plus in completing the final project of Ruby in Rails.

I'm an graphic designer by training, after a few years abroad in a developing country, I decided to enroll at Le Wagon Bootcamp in Paris to get familiar with programming languages and broaden my range of skills.

This experience was even more enriching than I had imagined. The training is demanding and sometimes tough but I have always been able to rely on the goodwill and expertise of the great teaching staff.

Retrospectively, I am still amazed by the quantity of knowledge that I have gained in 9 weeks. I also built bonds with many students with various backgrounds from my batch and I think it is one of the great strengths of Le Wagon.

Since then, I work as a consultant for various companies and individuals. Not only as a graphic designer but now also as a developer.

People wonder how 9 weeks can change your life, le Wagon is how.

I graduated from Northwestern University, in Chicago last June with a major in neuroscience and have since been determined to become a doctor. However, I believe that the classic path to medicine lacks a tech aspect that I wanted to settle during my gap year. I was told about Le Wagon, a nine week intensive bootcamp that gives you the necessary skills to create your own projects using the right tools and workflow. In the medical world, it is believed that “computing capability can transcend what a human being could ever do in their lifetime”. Le Wagon teaches you how to teach your computer to learn with the most competent teachers you could hope for.

The different backgrounds that you encounter at Le Wagon make you grow as a person and teach you how to tackle different problems with a variety of interpretations and solutions. People don’t compete with each other, they only help you compete with the person you were the day before. Not only does Le Wagon give you the technical competence to accomplish your projects, but the environment fostered drives you to constantly improve. The staff is here for every single student every step of the way:  from helping create a dynamic environment between the students to presenting you with a myriad of opportunities to accomplish what you want(organized talks, meetings with startups etc..) to giving you advice on any help you could potentially need, and making themselves completely available. I have never worked with a team so dedicated to the success of the students.  You are taught to never give up but to fight harder to succeed.

Le Wagon gave me some of the technical skills that I wanted and taught me that nothing is impossible. I am now doing a bootcamp in machine learning and artificial intelligence (Data science), to combine it which the coding skills I learnt at le Wagon in order to bring that to the next step of my medical studies and to constantly help the medical world evolve in the right direction.

Le wagon doesn’t last 9 weeks, it lasts your whole life. You build very strong links with the people that you work with everyday and with the family that you’ve become part of. The staff stays constantly available: before, during and after to accompany you and make sure you have own the keys to your success, the alumnis are always willing to help, to give you advice and to share their stories: everyone is here to help. I’m extremely grateful for what Le Wagon has taught me, both technically and humanely and wish everyone to have such a life-changing experience.  Contact me if you have absolutely any question I could answer/help with. 

Network - the course is not the end. I was surprised to see the community of 4,000+ alumni so active online where people are willing to help each other on programming, career, even just a short visit to another city where Le Wagon campus is based in.

Curriculum - Each time we learn a new concept, they let you build things from scratch by yourself first so that you see what’s behind all the magic. Also, they advance the level pretty fast - we start building small apps from week 2! It was tough but definitely helped build an architectural mindset from the beginning.

All the learnings lead to product building, which I think is essential for a full stack developer. There is a sprint day on user journey, user flow, design, wireframe and we were given two weeks to build a mock product and a real one for demo day. Our project team learned and enjoyed the journey so much that we decided to carry on with the project to launch it after the program. I think it wouldn’t have been possible without the confidence and encouragement we got throughout the course.

Last but not least, Le Wagon has a campus in Bali! Even though this was one of the main reasons I chose Le Wagon, I didn’t imagine it would make such a difference. Nature, lifestyle and people in Bali made this experience so much more inspiring. I was able to pursue a balanced life between coding and healing.  We had yoga sessions outdoor regularly to get our poor brain and body burnt out by coding some rest. Being away from everything else, I could fully immerse into coding and the Bali team helped me adapt perfectly to Bali life and enjoy the experiences that I should not miss in here.

    I graduated from Telecom ParisTech but I was not very familiar with code as I haven't been practicing for years. After a 5-year experience in the catering business, I decided to re-learn to code (nearly) from scratch by choosing to enrol at Le Wagon. I took a great pleasure while I was quickly moving forward. The steady immersion in an environment  full of traps and spanners, the quality of the provided tools that is perfectly customised to the teaching of this practice, the great skills of the teachers and their ability to adapt to beginners to better help them to assimilate new concepts, the consistency of the teaching modules and their timeline, the nice work environment where the spirit of co-operation and comradeship is present from day 1, all these elements actively contributed to make me learn not only the basics enabling me to launch a decent web app on my own, but also make me acquire such a taste for coding that I could start a safe transition in web development, and only 2 months after the bootcamp I got hired as a junior developer in an very promising startup.

    I urge everybody to join a coding bootcamp once in a lifetime, even out of curiosity, to discover how the web, one of the most precious and used tools, works and Le Wagon has an unquestionable know-how to make this experience truly exciting.

Before Le Wagon I was working dead end jobs at minimum wage. I always had a passion for computers but I always failed to understand computer programming. Last year I was looking for coding bootcamps to join in Montreal. I found Le Wagon due to their reputation around the world, which made my decision on joining the bootcamp much easier. Once I started the bootcamp after 2 weeks, I was discouraged because each day I had something new to learn I felt like I couldn't keep up. By the time the fouth week came around I understood more and became confident that I can complete the bootcamp. Overall I'm glad I went through this experince and I would do it over again. Now I have the skills of a Full-Stack Developer to start my new career.