Le Wagon

The school in Barcelona is located in a co-working space near La Sagrada Familia, it has a good kitchen, balcony, supermarket below and restaurants nearby. The classroom itself is like a small lecturing room in the corner of one of the co-working floors and you can break out to the co-working desks (if available) to do the day's work.

The buddy learning system (assigned a different coding buddy each day) in the early weeks really helps you with both learning the material and getting to know your classmates. Le Wagon also has a great support ticket system as well. Overall, I found the infrastructure and implementation of Le Wagon's course work to be super student friendly.

There are different teachers for different components of the course, for our batch they were often seconded from other Le Wagon bootcamps or are freelancers, so didn't necessarily have teaching experience. Therefore some teachers were markedly better than others when it comes to both lecturing and troubleshooting. That being said, Barcelona is a new location and the teachers seem to change with each batch, and you can also watch video lectures from the Paris bootcamp in French or English if you need to.

By week 9 though, you've gone from knowing nothing about code to building an fully functional app with a couple of your peers, experiencing a new city and making a ton of international friends along the way - for me that was an exhilterating and rewarding experience, as the title says, it still feels like a dream.

Final verdict: the coursework was excellent, my classmates rocked, Barcelona is an amazing city, but for the money paid, the standard of teaching staff could have been higher.

I’ve graduated from Le Wagon batch #18, about 4 months ago. I am 30-year-old and I have been working intensively for the past 6 years. I felt a bit nervous about getting back to a classroom into an intense learning situation for 9 weeks straight. I had read and heard a lot about the intensity of the program and how demanding it would be. I had never been the best at school and I didn’t have any engineering background. In a nutshell, I didn’t felt like I had the best profile and I was feeling anxious. Despite all, I consider that graduating from the Le Wagon was the best thing that happened to me for a real long time. Here is why…

 

Getting back to learning mode and building a new skill

Once you graduate from university how often will you get a chance to dedicate yourself 100% at learning a new skill for 2 months straight? And yet, isn’t the XXIst century economy all about adaptability, continuous learning and building fresh skills?

Of course, each day at work brings its shares of learning in some sense. But putting your career on hold for a couple of months and dedicating yourself to something really new has the ability to reconnect with the incredible power of learning. By breaking up my routine, I quickly felt excited again by discovering new stuff and I wanted to share this excitement around me. It really reminded me that we should always keep a fresh mindset and we should always aim for the step learning curve.

Sheryl Sandberg once said “Build your skills, not your resume”. Well that is exactly what Le Wagon is all about.

 

Getting a 360 overview

How often do you learn to build a project from beginning to end all on your own? Professionally, I knew a lot of things before joining Le Wagon but I have never been competent enough in a specific field so that I could do it all by myself. In that sense, the full stack program, which goes through back end, front end and infrastructure topics, gives you an incredible feeling of freedom and independence.

On top of it, even if you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve next, or which job opportunity you are aiming at, I would strongly advise to go for a full stack / generalist bootcamp program. Coding is such a long run that, for me, it doesn’t make any sense to focus right away. You have the rest of your programing life to focus, so why rushing?

 

Finally, here are the 2 most common questions I get when people ask me about Le Wagon.

Do I need to have a clear project in mind in order to be efficient?  

Absolutely not. In fact, I would think the opposite. People who showed up with an extremely specific project in mind tend to only see classes through this particular prism and might miss some things. Coming with no project enables you to get there with a free mind and get the best out of each and every classes.  

 

Where do I stand when I finish Le Wagon?

Learning ruby is just like learning any spoken language: there is the theoretical part and the practice. I remember learning Portuguese listening to podcasts in the bus for months. When I got to Brazil, I had never spoken with anyone and hence no one understood a single word I was saying. I believe it would be the same for ruby.

Le Wagon makes sure that you have all the theory right and give you basis of practice. Some within the class pick up much faster than others but ultimately, the only thing that matter is what are you going within the next 6 to 12 months. Ultimately, I see coding a bit like poker: it takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master. You will realize very quickly that it is impossible to learn all the coding tricks within 2 months but Le Wagon will guide you on how to find these tricks for the rest of your life. 

I graduated from Le Wagon in May 2015 in Paris, and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone with even the most remote interest in coding.

I recently attended a Q&A with DHH (creator of Ruby on Rails, the web framework taught at Le Wagon), where he said:

“Learn to code. If not to be a coder, then to understand the world.”

Le Wagon is the perfect doorway to begin that journey.

My Background

After an amazing learning experience in high school, I was less than enthused with my university experience (liberal arts). So I quit after my BA and took a job at a big company. 4 years later, I grew tired of the corporate culture and handed in my resignation to do Le Wagon.

The Bootcamp

All I wanted from the bootcamp was learning to code. But what I got from the bootcamp was much more:

• the Program: the program is excellently designed, both in pace and content. I really liked the no-nonsense approach to the material and the intensity was high but appropriate.
• the Team: the team behind the program is a rare combination of technical and human skills.
• the Network: with over 500 current alumnis and counting, the program keeps on giving beyond the 9 weeks it lasts. Whether you’re looking for a job or have a technical hiccup you need help with, the network has your back. Across 12 cities in 8 different countries.
• the Culture: learning code is one thing. But the human experience is a huge factor for me, especially under intense working conditions.. And that was my favorite thing from Le Wagon: the optimism that permeated everything about the program. You leave not only with an arsenal of new tech skills, but with a new mindset. The mindset of someone who doesn’t stop until something is working exactly like you intended. The mindset of a coder, of an entrepreneur, of a “Wagoneer”.

Le Wagon is the best educational experience I’ve ever had, and I will always look back at those 9 weeks as defining both personally and for my career.

After 7 years as VP Sales in a startup, it was time for me to have fun with code.

I was clearly determined to become a web developer.

At start, I tried hard to learn by myself with online courses, but It was really hard to link all these elements. I was able to create simple algorithms, but how to store it ? how to create a simple interface for web users ? how to share an URL to target my users ? At start, Internet is a mess !...

My luck was, a good CTO friend told me he just hired a young ‘graduated’ developer from Le Wagon and it was a good surprise for him and for his team. That was such an argument so after passing tests, I started to learn how to code with Le Wagon during the winter 2018. I really loved this experience working with other students with the same will to succeed in coding. Program and teachers are well-honed and after 9 weeks I was the first surprised by all the things I was able to accomplish.

After Le Wagon I practiced as a freelancer for small projects and since septembre 2018, I’m now CTO in a young company and I am having a lot of fun coding every day..

I have always been fascinated by great tech products and have always had plenty of ideas on how to make them better or come up with radically new ones. However, I always lacked the technical skills to make my ideas reality.

I did LeWagon to overcome this situation but would never have believed that I would actually learn this much. The LeWagon curriculum is incredibly well organized and just perfect for absolute coding beginners. The 9 weeks are intense but it's a super fun experience and the teachers are great. It really is a community and you can feel that the teachers are passionate about coding and want you to learn the skill.

Although, I am not working in a technical position strictly speaking, my technical skills help me in my day to day job. As a Business Developer I have to understand our product (Payment API) really well and I am currently working on a prototype to test a new use case for our product. Moreover, I am still working on a coding side project. 

In short, once you do the LeWagon Bootcamp you will never want to stop coding. I have recommended 3 friends to LeWagon since I left, which pretty much says it all

Le Wagon has been a life changing experience for me. I used to work at Conde Nast in New York City then moved to London. I was starting an app with my sister and got frustrated not being able to understand the web developers we were working with. I decided to put the project on hold and enrol at le Wagon London. At first, the program was hard but after a few weeks all made sense. During the program, I met my business partner, with who I now have a company called Socialive TV. We launched a little under a year ago and couldn’t be happier. Without le Wagon none of this could have happened!

I’d heard so much about Le Wagon before I started the course that I was afraid it was going to be overrated. Boy, I wasn’t disappointed. The curriculum is well thought out, like Lego bricks that you assemble. And the social experiment is definitely a highlight: meeting classmates who took the same risk as I did, the risk to learn something completely new and to perhaps also change their lives. 

But the most satisfying and rewarding part was to build the final project from scratch with my own hands (and with those of my 3 fantastic group members). Prior to the bootcamp, I was working as an Investment Analyst at a VC firm in Singapore and I was so frustrated about not being able to build anything except legal documents, Investment Memorandums and Excel spreadsheets. When I came back to Paris, I got seriously ill and wasn’t able to do anything for a long while as my frustration ramped up. Le Wagon helped me find a way back into the working world as I now work as an auto-entrepreneur building websites for others and for myself. Now I can’t go a day without thinking about coding new projects!

The course itself felt pretty comprehensive but after the daily lecture, you will be paired up with a buddy to work through it and re-teach each other. This in principle could change Software Engineers from working independently to collaborative professionals. This worked well in week one, but after a while individuals learning speeds differed and so did the motivation to be a good buddy. This became detrimental to one student's learnings who felt she could not continue because of the constant stream of poor buddies and a situation with a rather unharmonious final project team. The Teaching assistants also varied in approachability and care. All having different ways of fixing issues. One major thing was the minimal attempts Le wagon made to help with employment, 2 out of 5 Recruiters didn't turn up and not one business or Recruitment agency had a real role to interview for, they were simply connecting for the future. Employability is a real issue, despite the Teaching assitants promising to be on hand afterwards on the alumni slack channel, they have been pretty slow to respond.

Working in the sales department of e-commerce companies, I couldn’t help myself looking at ways we could improve our users experience. I was slowly moving towards the product side. I wanted to land a product manager position. But how do you talk to your programmer’s mates if you never coded anything? That’s why I joined Le Wagon. What happened next is just a life changing experience ! It was intense, fun and rewarding. I didn’t think I could learn that much skills in such a short period of time. You can feel the curriculum is crafted iteration after iteration, batch after batch. The teachers are all experts. You don’t lose time searching hours to debug your code. Experienced staff are there to solve your problems and teach you how to walk by yourself. I ended up loving coding so much that I changed my life’s goal to become a full time programmer. After the bootcamp you will enter in Le Wagon community and be able to get in touch with alumni who became experts in many fields. This is priceless !

Working in the sales department of e-commerce companies, I couldn’t help myself looking at ways we could improve our users experience. I was slowly moving towards the product side. I wanted to land a product manager position. But how do you talk to your programmer’s mates if you never coded anything? That’s why I joined Le Wagon. What happened next is just a life changing experience ! It was intense, fun and rewarding. I didn’t think I could learn that much skills in such a short period of time. You can feel the curriculum is crafted iteration after iteration, batch after batch. The teachers are all experts. You don’t lose time searching hours to debug your code. Experienced staff are there to solve your problems and teach you how to walk by yourself. I ended up loving coding so much that I changed my life’s goal to become a full time programmer. After the bootcamp you will enter in Le Wagon community and be able to get in touch with alumni who became experts in many fields. This is priceless !