Le Wagon

I decided to make a career change from Investment Banking to coding after researching and attending multiple workshops and talks. 

I looked at several providers and chose Le Wagon based on the combination of reputation, price, length of course, diversity of the cohort, course content, teaching environment and approach but mostly the focus on building a product and developing problem solving skills.

The course is fast paced and intensive but the teachers/teaching assistants and Driver (Le Wagon Manager) were always available and approachable to help with any concerns. They always make sure that no one falls behind. It's crazy thinking about how much content we covered in 9 weeks.

For someone who didn't have a tech background I found that it all came together in the last 3 weeks of the bootcamp where you build a marketplace in week 7 then weeks 8 - 9 on a product pitched by a member of the course.

Why 4 stars? There's always room for improvement and I provided feedback on certain aspects of the course. I'm happy to report that Paal (the Le Wagon Driver) took it on board and has already implemented it for the next course.

As a former building and civil engineer, Le Wagon enabled me to change career and to join a French growing startup that deals with construction companies because I was then able to understand their tech product from its conception to its daily use by their clients.

Today, as a project manager, I am working on the evolution of our product thanks to the tech skills and knowledge I got at Le Wagon.

On top of that, through the bootcamp I lived intense and bonding moments with amazing people that I kept in touch with and that I  often see.

I strongly recommend Le Wagon to whomever wants to learn to code and to join a rich and truly unique learning experience.

I decided to learn to code after managing data scientists in my former job.  Having an analytical background, I became increasingly frustrated that, whilst I could help them think through problems in the abstract, I could not help with technical problems. This, combined with the fact I was wanting to switch industries to work in tech and sustainability, made me take the leap and learn to code.

I chose Le Wagon after some extensive googling. Three things stood out for me: 1. It emphasised that the bootcamp was not only for people who wanted to become developers, but also for people who would be managing/ working closely with them, 2. It was ‘full-stack’, meaning we learned front-end and back-end programming, 3. It wasn’t too long (in hindsight I wish it was longer!)

Le Wagon Barcelona far exceeded my expectations. The quality of teaching and materials is excellent. The curriculum is constantly being updated to make sure students are taught the most relevant information. 9 weeks is short but having come out the other end, I have a solid grounding in Ruby, learned good habits and know where to look to keep developing my skills.

The teachers in Barcelona are also fab. As well as creating a fun learning atmosphere, they are incredibly patient and skilled in breaking down concepts so that beginners can easily grasp them. The fact that all of them have gone through the bootcamp themselves means they have first-hand experience of what you are going through.

My fellow students made the experience special. We were a diverse bunch - in ages, backgrounds and reasons for learning to code - which meant I learned a lot from everyone. Each day we worked through exercises with a new ‘buddy’. This was a great way of getting to know the whole group and made us progress quickly as it was easy to share tips. Being new to Barcelona, it was also nice to have people to see the city with, whether that was grabbing a pizza and cerveza after class or playing football on a Saturday morning.

For anyone who is considering doing Le Wagon Barcelona, as I have been telling my friends/ family/ anyone who will listen, just go for it! It If you want to learn a new skill, change career, meet new people, you won’t regret choosing Le Wagon Barcelona.

i liked the overall atmosphere, made it very fun to learn and was structured well. My favorite part was the buddy system. The 9 weeks were great, much more than i expected. The learning structure was very well planned and I really appreciated that.

For me, the biggest help was actually after the course ended. Le wagon has such a huge international community with people who went through exactly what you did but in different stages. This really makes a difference because you continue to get real world experience and information that  would other wise take you years to learn on your own. 

I would deffintely recommend to others.

I really like the setup of the course, the people and instructors! Everyone was great! The moment I entered the office every day, everyone was happy, in a good mood, motivating and funny! I loved to come here everyday and I really gonna miss this! really had the best time here in Tel Aviv with Le Wagon. Although it was very intense, it made a lot of fun to learn coding, solve challenges with the buddies and to be together as a group! Time flew during the bootcamp, which is always a good sign that it must have been a great time! I loved it!

I spent more than four years in a consulting role, before I decided to take a break from my professional career and learn a new skill, coding, which I was personally interested in for a longer time, however lacked time, discipline, and most importantly a structured and already proven approach to learning.

Due to personal recommendations of friends, I checked out Le Wagon and immediately felt that this was exactly what I was looking for. This impression was confirmed when I had an initial chat with Rich, the driver at Le Wagon in Berlin.

From my perspective, three points were particularly valuable about the Le Wagon experience:

1.) Very nicely structured programme, which challenges both experienced as well as totally inexperienced students to a degree that optimizes learning for everyone without feeling lost. They have implemented an awesome mix between morning lectures, which teach the fundamentals for the daily exercises, as well as subsequent challenges and live codes to apply the daily learnings and gain practical routine.

2.) Online additional resources and network

Since the bootcamp has been around for quite some time now, there is an almost endless amount of additional resources to continue learning during and after the bootcamp. Also, Le Wagon now builds on a very strong community of more than 5k alumni which are very eager to help on coding problems etc.

3.) People

Great set of fun people with very diverse and interesting backgrounds, yet everyone is very focused and committed to the course.

Would highly recommend this!

I decided to learn coding because web apps are now everywhere and in every sector, from the simple food delivery app to the army simulators. My initial project was to develop skills in web development after 3 years in 3D realtime infographics specialised in VR and in Augmented Reality because coding would be a great addition to my skills. I chose Le Wagon because I had got great feedbacks from my brother who had previously done the bootcamp in Shanghai, but also because of their teaching methodology and their well-known reputation both inside the French tech ecosystem and on the international level thanks to all their foreign campuses.

After many years of studying and of ‘alternance’ work during my studies in Digital Marketing, it became clear that knowing how to code was vital if I wanted to evolve in this sector. Le Wagon is a school that was recommended to me by several colleagues, one of whom went into the bootcamp as a working professional and another as an SEO expert. Compared to all the courses I have completed throughout my studies, I have never learned so much in so little time. It was very demanding, especially at the beginning but you quickly learn to adapt and get into the rhythm of things. At the end of the course, I came out with real hard skills. It’s a course that forces you to learn and work together with other students by constantly helping each other.

In 2018 I started my gap year, enjoying the fact that I had the chance to be self-sufficient as I pursued anything I wanted to do. Even before joining Le Wagon, I had taken an interest in the idea of coding, asking what few people I knew with experience to guide me where they could to a starting point. But coding very quickly seemed inaccessible. Everyone I knew was already part of that world, and whilst each friend had a different way of getting into it, I felt as if none of these were options in my situation. I saw coding courses advertised, but didn’t like the idea of going back to a school system so soon after leaving it, until I was told about Le Wagon. Coming into the offices to speak to Alex felt easy, and his explanation convinced me to sign up and start saving. This for me was the best part of the bootcamp; you are immediately put at ease by the friendliness of the teachers, who explain things clearly and patiently, and more importantly never treat you as just a student. I needed the community atmosphere at Le Wagon as this was the first time I felt able to “be a part of” the coding world, and it gave me a greater drive to learn more. The course was intense for sure, but I never felt like it was a burden to come in, so for me it became very easy to lock in and focus on learning. The course itself is amazing, as every day you are exposed to new ideas, and then given the rest of the day to test them out, and learn about them yourself. If they were particularly challenging, there was always someone on hand to help you one-to-one, be it another student or one of the TA’s, so you never felt stuck at your desk, completely at a loss.
The ability to work for two weeks on an idea you have is equally incredible. We were given full support from all the TA’s to help flesh out our design, and refining it to make a working, beautiful website. It struck me every day of the project weeks how strange it was that just a month before, it was hard to remember even the names of all the coding languages. On this course you are given a great opportunity to be welcomed into a world that can seem daunting, whilst they provide the learning materials and proper community needed to push on from the last day, and continue your progression from wherever you started, to becoming a full fledged coding god. It is an experience I won’t forget, and one I’d recommend to anyone.