Le Wagon

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…

I enjoyed a lot my experience at Le Wagon Bordeaux. I was then enrolled as a student in the batch 51. To me, it was a great experience, both humanely and professionally talking.

Humanely, it allows me to meet many people from every background and every age. People, both students and teachers, are for the most talented, enthusiastic, motivated and funny. It makes the atmosphere really cool. Besides, in my opinion, it is definitely a way to learn faster and easier. You really meet great people during Le Wagon. It’s a real human and enriching experience on that matter. Furthermore, you have many opportunities to maintain a relationship with people thanks to very regular meetings (every week) and web tools.

Professionally, I think Le Wagon is a real springboard. You get a very effective knowledge. Courses are not bullshit at all. The content is very serious, precise and useful. Whatever is your final objective, become a developer, get more legitimity to web products’ management positions, or launch your business, you won’t regret the journey. Everything is really very well thought out. I mean both the organisation, the courses by themselves but also the philosophy behind. For example, there is a great attention given to collaboration, which is to my view very useful. You also learn to promote and defend your own projects. Thus, there is a real entrepreneurial orientation given to the bootcamp in general, which is obviously very well considered. At the end, you will present your project in front of a great assembly composed by the students, the teachers, but also people from different business.

For the two last weeks, you will construct your own final project in a group of three or four. You will be surprised to see all the things you can achieve in only two weeks. It’s really incredible. For my part, I was in a group of four and we built from scratch an entire e-commerce site. The customer journey was effectively working from A to Z with in addition a great design and a great user experience. We were really proud of it and we had a lot of excellent feedback, including some fruitful ones !

So, as you may have guess, I definitely recommend Le Wagon. It’s an enriching and very concretely useful experience. Do no longer hesitate !

You are a creative individual and you don't have the tech skills to make your ideas real? You feel that your studies, even prestigious, haven't provided you these skills, focusing more on theory than practice? You want to change your life? Don't hesitate any more, just jump on the band wagon!

I made this choice 6 months ago and I don't regret it! After a MSc in Engineering, I spent 5 years in a consulting company before I decided to launch my own startup: ZADL, a service to plan paid events between friends.

In order to test this idea, I needed a fully functional MVP, and I didn't want to delegate the development of the product. Sadly, I had no programming skills to handle it on my own. At this time, I heard about Le Wagon from a friend very connected to Paris startup ecosystem. I made my own investigation calling a bunch of alumni! They were all extremely enthusiastic about their experience. I was convinced at this point and I just jumped in. I was part of batch 43 and did the 9-week course from October to December 2016.

In only 2 months, we went through all the basic skills a beginner needs in order to build a web application from A to Z. Ruby programming for the backend side, SQL for the database, HTML/CSS and Javascript for the front-end part, and also very useful product design tools like Sketch or Marvelapp. We also learnt how to collaborate within a developers' team using Github, and used Ruby on Rails to speed up our app development and not re-invent the wheel for every new web application. During the 3 last weeks of the programme, we worked on two projects, that we built completely and put in production with Heroku. One of these projects was my startup idea, http://beta.zadl.fr/.

In my opinion, Le Wagon made me save nearly 2 years compared to what I would have learnt on my own with online MOOC and tutorials. Le Wagon's program is really intense and requires a 100% commitment. But there is also a very cool atmosphere, with a team of dedicated and passionate teachers and teaching assistants. Besides the "coding" part, Le Wagon also connect you to a great community: young grads, artists, engineers who want to switch their careers... We all helped each other during the 9 weeks and some of us really became close friends. After Le Wagon, part of my buddies pursued their entrepreneur's journey, and a lot of them started working as developers, either doing freelance or in full-time positions.

To conclude, I would recommend Le Wagon to anyone willing to learn how to build a web application with a very thorough curriculum and an amazing students' community, that be for working on your own project or literally for changing your life!

Learn to code and change your life! 9 weeks and that’s it, you can call yourself a dev and realize any web app with your two hands? Sounds a bit ambitious but four weeks after finishing the bootcamp (batch#48) I can definitely confirm that this is true!  I have quit a comfortable yet annoying product manager position in the IT industry to jump into a fascinating but risky entrepreneurial adventure in the Travel sector. Le Wagon was a pivot in this adventure and gave me efficient technical skills. Thanks to the content and the quality of the bootcamp, I am developping a MVP on my own. I am about to show it to potential investors.  All I need now is to incorporate my company an test my product!

My experience at the batch#50 Le Wagon at Rio was amazing! Really a life changing experience. Before the bootcamp I couldn’t find a job and was actually struggling to find something I wanted to do. I’ve learned so much with the Wagoneurs, I feel like I can do anything right now.
   I was always interested in technology and what it could do, so I got into Mechanical Engineering school and looked for researches and extracurricular groups. But when I graduated at the beginning of 2016, I saw that most of the opportunities in engineering were on production, following orders and doing a lot of the same thing every day. Nothing in the area interested me much, but I still felt like I needed a job, so I got lost looking for opportunities without any focus.
   One of those job searches led me to find out about Le Wagon. At first I was a bit skeptical because I didn’t picture myself as a part of the start-up/entrepreneurship world and didn’t know how much they could actually teach me in 9 weeks, but I decided to apply just to learn to code better and hoping I could find a job as a developer afterwards. I am so glad I gave it a shot.
   I had some programming skills before the bootcamp, but now, after it, I consider myself a web developer. Not only we learned to write HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery and Ajax, we also learned how to build software from scratch with a strong and scalable ruby backend using the Rails framework. Something I also consider very important is that now I feel confident enough to look for solutions for whatever problem I may face on-line and adapt to my code, which happens all the time to developers. All of that using Git and Github to contribute with my batch and project buddies.
   Le Wagon gave me the technical skills with which I can now build any prototype and start-up any idea I have. During my time there I really found myself doing something exciting, with the help of awesome people. It really changed me personally and professionally. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn to code. This is the place for that and much more.

On July 2016, the company in which I worked as an engineer for years had to let go all of its workers. The Brazilian crisis hit us and it hit us hard. In that day I realized that the good old times of engineering had been left behind and that there was no use in looking for a new job. The country wasn't growing anymore, there was no money left and nobody was investing. Me, as a Construction Engineer, realized that I couldn't be independent, that there was no use for all those years that I dedicated to my work. I would always depend on the government, investments and big corporations.

Some weeks later I realized that I had to learn new abilities that would give me independence that would break that rope. 
That's how I restarted to study coding. I had learned a little bit on university, but the good old Pascal wasn't any good anymore. 
I bought some courses on Udemy. I started with python. I watched some hours of class but was a bit lost. I didn't know how to apply that on the real world and neither where I could use all those For, While, classes and objects.

I got tired of python and started trying to learn front-end. I thought to myself "Now we're good". I was really learning something from html and css but when I got to javascript and jquery then even though the teacher had really nice ratings on Udemy that was just not doing the job. Sit in my chair watching classes wasn't getting me anywhere - it was time to get my hands dirty. 
I started to look for on-site courses and I was introduced to the bootcamp concept. I found some really expensive ones in the USA that appeared to be very good, but it wasn't financially worthy for me. I then looked in Europe and found a French coding bootcamp called Le Wagon. And, to my surprise, there was a batch starting in Rio, close to my apartment.

I then researched innumerous reviews, articles, videos, instagram posts... everything that I could get my hands on. I only found good reviews and comments, so I decided to apply to the batch starting in January 2017 in Rio. 
After I got approved in an interview with one of the cofounders of Le Wagon Brazil, one of the mandatory pre-requisites was finishing up the Ruby track on Codecademy. During this course I realized that Ruby is a much easier programming language than all the others I had contact with. I liked it so much that I finished the track in a few days and one month before the begging of the bootcamp. 

In the first days of bootcamp I noticed that the methodology was completely different from everything I had seen before. 
Their learning platform to start with - a system of exercises, examples, questions, classes, and everything you'll need during your course and resources that will help in your career. Everything is there. 

Everyday classes start at 9am with one hour and a half well needed theoretical classes. We had 6 different teachers, every one of them teaching subjects they knew very well. After the theoretical part we jumped in to the real life exercises, some of them mandatory for the day and some more expert optional exercises. The platform has a buddy system so we can work in pairs, every day we had a different buddy, so we got to work with everybody - working in doubles is fundamental - the best way to learn is teaching. 

The exercises were hand picked, not all the methods and solutions were in the classes, and so we had to learn how to dig in for solutions - like in real life coding challenges. We learned how to go through documentation, good old Google and our best friend stack overflow. That's how a developer works. Based in somebodies solution, we build our own. 
At the end of the day we did some live coding with the teacher, where we solved one or two extra exercises together - it was always really cool to see other students solutions and logic to the same problems. 

During the bootcamp we learned necessary programming languages. We started with Ruby - we've build some software’s that worked on the command prompt - you know, that thing that looks really hacker like! We've learned to parse and scrap websites, I really loved doing that, and I scrapped many websites myself. 
Then we jumped in database, an elementary part of every software, we learned how to persist and manipulate the data. 

Then we jumped into interface design with the frontend part, HTML and CSS helped us design our apps user interface. We also went through javascript and jquery, the old black command prompt got left behind and we could build good-looking web apps! 
In the 6th week, we finally reached Rails! This is the week where all the magic happens! Everything is connected and makes sense: Ruby, HTML, CSS, Jquery, Database. Everything is possible now! 

In the last two weeks of the bootcamp we have to build a app from scratch. Every student gets to present as many ideas as he has in mind and the ones that get more votes from the students gets developed. We were divided in four groups. 
My group developed an app to order food and beverages in stadiums and events and get it delivered in your seat. We learned how to develop many interesting functions, like logins, payments, facebook interaction, etc. In two weeks, we had used almost everything we had learned in the 7 weeks before. 

In the last day we had the opportunity to present our project to the public, with the presence of the press and even VCs, investors, and members of the tech community. Awesome!
It's a long text but I really wanted to show you how everything felt! 
If it was worth it? Definitively! Some students got jobs, some launched their products and some are working as freelancers! I managed to become independent, as intended!

I graduated from a French Business School in 2015 and after a few years travelling and working as a business developer in tech companies I thought it was time for me to start learning again. I wanted to expand my technical skills and find a way to express my creativity.

In coding, there is always new trends to analize, new things to learn. A friend of mine who works in the tech and start-up scene in Paris recommended me Le Wagon. I was already living in Barcelona and I met Gus, the driver, who invited me to a demo day. I was amazed by the quality of the projects. I decided that I wanted to learn how to build a product from scratch and decided to join the next batch. That’s how I fell in love with the world of programming !

The first 2 weeks were tough. I had to jump head first into a brand new world full of equations and that I found very conceptual. But I soon understood that I will never be left alone with my problems. Becoming a developer comes with an amazing community always prone to share advice and to support you.

The program very well-structured: lectures in the morning, exercizes in the afternoon with the help of the teachers, and live-code in the evening as a recap of the day’s concept.
The teaching was also top quality. The staff at Le Wagon Barcelona is skilled, supportive and enthusiastic, and I have been amazed by the teachers’ availability and dedication. There is a real sense of community that helped me throughout the bootcamp and since. This is more than a technical program, the bootcamp also teaches great product and project management skills : during the project stage I learnt how to define the easiest Product possible with an optimized user experience.

In a few words, Le Wagon gave me necessary skills and enough confidence to feel autonomous after the bootcamp to work on my own projects and keep learning: there will definitely be a before and after Le Wagon. I would recommend the course to anyone ready to start a challenging coding journey and discover an exciting community.

It's been a few weeks since I finished my training in the wagon in Bordeaux during the bacth #51 and today I confirm a sentence that I could see on their website: "You will learn in 2 months what you would have learned in 2 years".

    After graduating with a degree in commerce, I wanted to reorient myself in an area that really attracted me but I did not want to go back on several years of studies. The ideal was to find a fast and qualitative training to get strong skills in web development and The Wagon was the key to succeed.

    I had the opportunity before I graduated in marketing to do a year of computer science, but i realised that after a year I did not have real reusable skills.

    9 January 2017, the adventure begins with 28 totally different people. The first few days are relatively difficult, we code, it works but we do not know how. More days passe and I realize that our level is really good. All that we were doing with difficulty and that we didn’t understand a few days later came basic elements that were mechanically realized with a real understanding.

    We spend 9 weeks to think and work, we learn all that is necessary to develop a website from scratch.

    The last two weeks are devoted to develop a personal project in a group. I was able to develop a survey application with impressive functionalities. The fact of being able to make it discover to other people was a satisfaction and a motivation to continue in this field, due to the complexity of the site and the final result that was incredible.

    Today the training is over and the Wagon has been the best experience of my life. I have been able to obtain a relatively high level that I could never get without the help of the teachers but also the students who support during the 9 weeks and the network of more than 1200 people.    

Thanks to the wagon for this new passion, this great atmosphere and these deciding skills that I added to my cv.

Fremin Florian, Alumni Batch #51 Bordeaux.