Le Wagon

Prior to Le Wagon I was a Management Consultant in a firm specialising in technology projects, where I had worked with web developers in non technical roles such as business analyst. I found working with them very enjoyable, but always felt held back by my lack of technical knowledge, so decided to dedicate some time to complete a full stack web development bootcamp.

I chose Le Wagon due to its excellent reputation and online reviews and it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. The teaching and course structure were excellent. The course is intense and challenging, but worth it - I’ve learned far more than I ever imagined. The teaching staff are fantastic and it was great to work with other students from different backgrounds and countries.

I also really enjoyed the entrepreneurial focus of Le Wagon and working as a team on two projects built in the final weeks of the course. I am confident now building MVPs, and perhaps more importantly, Le Wagon has equipped me with the knowledge and skills to continue learning.

In December of 2017 I graduated from a coding boot camp in Shanghai, China. To say that it was a life changing experience is to understate the degree to which new opportunities presented themselves, both professionally and personally within in span of four months.

            For me, going through the boot camp had been a long time in the making. I had been an English teacher for a year in Shanghai, and then started working as a recruiter for the company I had been teaching with. The job started out ok, but I found myself dedicating 70-80 hours per week. After four months on the job, I began to see what few opportunities lie ahead: I could improve my administrative skills related to collecting applicants’ documents and climb the corporate the ladder within the HR department, or transfer to another department. At the time, I had no hard skills, so I would have been restricted in my options, most likely writing content for our various products.

            The prospects were not good and I did not have a strong sense of hope in my career as it stood. I was essentially offering my ability to use the English language to write content, or improve how organized and efficient I could be to serve the benefit of the corporation I was working for.

            On New Years Eve 2016, I met and made friends with someone who just arrived in Shanghai and was working as a developer for the same organization. He was making nearly 3 times my salary and had enough free time to get to know the city. He had begun his journey as a developer through a well-known coding boot camp in the US. That is when the idea started floating in my head and sticking.

            Fast-forward 9 months into my job and I had had enough of the ambiguity. I left my position as a recruiter to return to teaching with the goal of getting back time to myself to prepare for joining a boot camp as soon as possible. The problem was that there were no English-speaking coding camps around. I started toying with the idea of going back to the US and nearly did, until I found out about Le Wagon. Originally started in Paris France in 2014, it began expanding quickly with locations in over 30 countries as of May 2018.

The Plan:

My intention from the get-go was to find a job as a developer, either freelance or full-time after the camp. I had spoken with several developers that I knew personally and decided that I wanted to be skilled in front-end development, with a focus on JavaScript.

To be able to enact any plan, you need to have a financial runway. With the amount of money saved, I had roughly four months to find sustainable employment, which was either a full-time job or freelance gigs that would lead to more. This was Plan A. We graduated in early December 2017, so my runway was until about March 2018.

Plan B was return home to the US and continue to job hunt from my parent’s home. I did not want to return to the US, but it was a realistic Plan B. I refused to take on any job that was not strictly development because that is the skill I intended to grow, even if I had to do it from the US.

The Beginning of Camp (and a reassessment):

            So camp begins and after a few weeks, I am humbled. Coding is a lot more difficult than I initially expected. I start to question if working as a developer is really for me. Some of the students who were in my batch had a background in engineering or had taken some computer science courses were doing pretty well.

Development is very heavily front-loaded with information. Once you can get over the initial hump of learning how all the pieces fit together, things start to make sense quicker. Even though it is tough, something in the back of my mind just tells me that I will be working as a developer. Regardless of how it is going to happen, it is going to happen.

This particular camp is great because we visited several different firms around the city where we may be able to work after graduation. One meeting that boosted my motivation halfway through camp was at a startup accelerator. I met the founder of a company that had graduated from that accelerator about a year prior. One of his products is similar to the product I worked on for the boot camp’s final project, so I ended up interviewing with them for a project manager role but decline it because I was looking to code, period.

            Finally the end of camp rolls around and we present our products. It was a really exciting day to be able to show off what we have built. The next day, here I am – jobless and ready to take something on. During the final two weeks, I spent a lot of time focusing on the final project, so I did not follow up with the contacts I had made during the camp.

 On the first day after camp, my self-assessment of my skills is lower than I expected. I found that it was difficult to set accurate expectations on what my skill level would be post-camp because my knowledge-base was initially low.

I spent the first month after camp following up with potential employers and coding. Every day I coded for 7 hours through an online course that I had purchased to help me learn React.

A month after camp ended, I was able to land a full time job as a developer with a startup through the accelerator that Le Wagon had taken us to.

50% of the value that you get from a coding camp is the network that it has in place. Especially in the early days of your career, your network is key to getting paying gigs, whether they are freelance or full time. I am very happy with the value that Le Wagon’s network has been able to provide.

They also have a healthy habit of bringing back students from previous batches to talk about what they are doing now, T.A.-ing, and even lecture as teachers.

Overall, I am very happy with the change in my career since I went through the boot camp. Time is flying by at this point with each batch that comes and goes. Being able to reflect on my time at the camp and seeing other students who are now going through the same steps has helped me view the experience in a more holistic way and be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses with more clarity.

Amazing curriculum. Very organized lectures. Fantastic teachers. While most bootcamps focus primarily on career, essentially training you to be a cog in a machine, Le Wagon approaches their curriculum by focusing primarily on product development. They teach you how to create a great product, while teaching you all the tech you will need to get it done. 

I can honestly say that after one session at LeWagon, you will have a toolkit ready to build a saas platform immediately upon graduation. No exaggeration. 

If you are reading this post, you probably know that the slogan for Le Wagon is “change your life learn to code”.  It sounded like a platitude to me, at least it was how I felt before joining the camp. However, before I realized it, Le Wagon experience actually changed my life. During the camp, not only did I learn the foundation of coding, but it also helped build up my confidence. This confidence allows me to continue learning more advanced coding challenges independently even after the camp. In addition, Le Wagon helps me to connect to different tech communities which helps me to gain insights on the different tech sectors. More importantly, I met a group of new friends who share common interests, and join hackathons together. Therefore, I would proudly recommend Le Wagon to my friends

Before Le Wagon I worked as a project and event manager. During my career, I became frustrated with all the manual processes of the work and the time they took. These sort of processes leave event managers stressed along with a great deal of additional work. I constantly looked for ways to resolve this problem for my offices but soon realised it was possible, through technology, to change the whole industry. This is when I seriously started looking to become a dev.

It can be overwhelming looking for bootcamps as there are so many, I chose Le Wagon as it had the best reviews. For me, the most important thing was that I secured a job after the course, as I quit my job to make the change of career. At first I wasn’t sure that I made the right decision but as soon as my first day was over I knew that I had made the right choice. Not only were the teachers very helpful but they are extremely knowledgeable. They will ensure you understand what you are doing and will go above and beyond by answering questions, even after hours.

The way the course is set up is extremely thought out, it allowed me to work autonomously but still had me feel supported. The course is very intense but completely worth it and I can say that signing up to the course is the best choice I have ever made! I am so proud of myself, of what I have learned, my project but mostly that I can now work as a dev. It is really something I am be proud of.

I have never been happier with my career and it is all because of Le Wagon. I cannot recommend it more.

Now, six months after camp and six months into freelancing as a web designer & developer, it’s hard to believe that this time last year I didn’t know how to write even one line of code. So how did I get to where I am now? I know it might sound overdramatic, but I feel like there was my life before Le Wagon, and my life after Le Wagon, and both feel worlds apart.

Life Before Le Wagon

After graduating from university in my hometown, Montreal, Canada, I moved to Beijing, and then subsequently to Shanghai in 2015 when I started working as a buying assistant for a luxury fashion multibrand. After about a year and a half, I started itching for something with a little more responsibility and creative freedom, so when the opportunity to join a founding team on a fashion startup arose, I jumped on it.

Working at this startup was an intense and valuable experience for me, and acting as the product manager, one of my responsibilities was to manage the tech team building our main product. Out of all my duties, I found communicating and managing the tech team to be the most difficult, or at least the one task I knew that I could definitely improve at. In an effort to learn more of anything within the tech space, I attended one of the Le Wagon public workshops “How to Build a Landing Page in 2 Hours”. I loved it! I was so fascinated by how a few lines of code could translate into my own website (an ugly one, but still a website!). The workshop is how I discovered Le Wagon and I told myself that if ever I had a gap in work, I’d join the bootcamp.

Sure enough, a few months later, the start up didn’t work out and instead of looking for a new job straight away, I decided to join Le Wagon and develop my tech skills so that I could become a more experienced and knowledgeable product manager/start-up founder/fashion e-commerce owner/insert-whatever-job-title, seeing as tech experience would only help in any of the potential future jobs I could think of for myself.

Life During Le Wagon

I started the 9-week bootcamp in October 2017. The first few weeks were hard. We were learning Ruby and as I found some things logical, I found most things too abstract for my visual mind. It was a lot of frustration and a lot of reminding myself to be patient and do my best. In fact, dealing with frustration (which really is just learning how to learn, find answers, and unfrustrate yourself), patience, and doing your best, ended up being some of the most important takeaways for me from the camp, and are probably the most applicable now after I’ve graduated as well.

For those who don’t know the Le Wagon structure, every morning we have a lecture for 1-2 hours, and the rest of the day is spent working on practical exercises with a partner paired at random. This course set up is designed to replicate the real world, and is what strengthened all of our abilities to learn how to learn tech. What does that mean? We don’t get fed answers, the same way that would never happen after you graduate. First, we must try and find solutions to issues on our own, then by asking our partner, then by writing a ticket online calling for help to one of the teachers or TAs as you would in a tech forum like Stack Overflow.

Apart from the rigorous training, Le Wagon also set up various talks and company visits that we were incredibly lucky to get the chance to be a part of. I very quickly realized that Le Wagon is much more than a bootcamp, it's a far-reaching community and network of helpful, intelligent, and passionate individuals. The community and network aspect is the biggest contributor and reason I was able to move into freelance so seamlessly right after camp.

Life After Le Wagon

Time since finishing Le Wagon has flown by, but in a good way. After a much-needed break and visit back home at the end of camp, I still wasn’t sure whether I’d look for a new full-time job, or end up pursuing freelancing. I decided I’d return to Shanghai and freelance as I look for a new job, but the day after returning, one of my good friend’s from camp who had gotten hired by a startup company as a developer got me a freelance project with his company doing front-end work. This snowballed into a second project, and then a third, and then I soon had little to no time (or desire) to look for a full-time job anymore.

I’ve definitely learned the pros and cons of freelancing over the last few months, and have constantly had my boundaries pushed, but that’s what has forced me to learn and grow post-camp. Most importantly, as was so valuable during camp, the Le Wagon community and network has been the biggest change in my life. Not only do I have all this new knowledge that opened a completely new realm and sea of opportunity, but I also have these incredible supportive peers, many of which have become some of my closest friends.

A year ago I would have never believed I’d be doing what I do now, and now I can’t believe that I didn’t know much of anything about tech a year ago. Like I said, I feel like there was my life before Le Wagon and now there is my life after.

struggling to learn web development by myslef and looking forward to brush up my skills more efficiently, I came across Le Wagon coding bootcamp and it was for me the best decision that I have taken lately . With a very complete program and setup, a professional platform including efficient well organised order to study different needed tools for a web developer , highly skilled and experienced teachers, also I got the chance to have such wonderful classmates and a best teacher assistant !(who become a real friend: Douglas).

And once an alumni you have access to very huge community and forever support from teachers and assistance to get job or to start your own startup.
I advise anyone who really would like to understant coding and web development to choose le Wagon!
Arigatou gozaimau le Wagon

My experience with Le Wagon Batch 144 in Montreal has been amazing. The curriculum and staff had made it possible for me to learn web development in the simplest and most effective way. It provides the students with the skills that it needs in the tech industry, which does not only include a strong understanding of back end and front end development but also a strong group work ethic. Moreover, Le Wagon has such a big community of likeminded people that it continues to benefit those who have graduated from it. The ability to connect with over 3000 alumni worldwide through slack benefits you as many alumni’s are willing to lend a hand and help you in things such as tech advice or jobs. The 9 week program instills in you the tools you need to start a career in the tech industry and the network to lean on. I loved my experience with Le Wagon. I got all the skills I wanted and I would recommend this program to anyone who asks. 

Hey I’m Benoit 👋

I attended the Wagon course in March 2018 in Paris.

I am 22 years old and I am still not graduated from my business school. Wishing to evolve in a web environment, I decided to join the Wagon as early as possible because I was particularly frustrated not having any technical skills 😳

I am passionate about beautiful web products and fluid UX and I wanted to join a B2B Saas start up as a full-stack developer intern.

This is why I joined Workelo, and as soon as I arrived I find out myself to be operational really soon !  Since then I have been learning every day really easily thanks to the robust pedagody and mindset provided by the wagon. 👨‍💻

But above that,  what makes the greatest strength of the wagon is the “community”, I met within my batch very inspiring people from various backgrounds!

Long life to the wagon 😍🎉

I was in batch #143 of Le Wagon in London.

For the past ten years, I have tried to make a career out of teaching and translation. After a decade, I realised that this isn’t my passion. I’ve always really enjoyed anything computer related and I’m very interested in IT. I seemed to pick things up pretty fast in the past, but I think the fact that some people have been coding since they were 13, and I have not, always kept me from trying. The fact that it is a very male dominated industry also didn’t help! When I finally decided to take the plunge and try, I researched which coding bootcamp in London was the best. Le Wagon kept coming out on top.

I knew that the course was going to be hard, I didn’t doubt that at all, but I may even have underestimated a bit. Being bombarded with new information every single day was a big challenge. I even dreamt of coding every night during the entire course! However, I really enjoyed learning all these new and interesting things, and being able to actually use a skill you’ve just learnt after two weeks of thinking it is an impossible task is an amazing feeling. It really helped that, besides having such a tight team of amazing teachers, my fellow students were also extremely motivated and helpful. Especially the other women on the course really helped me through it!

The final weeks, where you spent time working on a project in a team, were great. It’s amazing to see how everyone has their own strengths within a project group, and it felt really good to see our app coming together so nicely. In our batch, we were the only group who created an app towards helping people rather than making money, and I’m very proud of that. The app is designed to be a crowdfunding platform for people who are homeless, to make them a profile and get the items they need funded. Hopefully, someday we can deploy our app for real and help people.

If you are interested in learning to code I would very much recommend Le Wagon. The atmosphere is great and afterwards, you’ll be part of a coding community for life. Don’t expect it to be easy, but you’ll learn more in nine weeks than you ever thought was possible.

I lived in the US for 9 years were I pursued my undergraduate degree in Business and later on my MBA and Master's in Science of Finance. After 2 years of experience in the steel industry I worked in process management and business development for a private business group dedicated to Retail and Real Estate (3 years) were I got to travel to places like: Portugal, Brazil, South Korea, Switzerland, Ireland, China and Hong Kong.

Joining Le Wagon has been the best decision I have made and would advice a younger me to have joined this industry years ago. Now that I'm a FullStack Programmer I can freelance, join any industry or startup I want.

The community of Le Wagon is friendly, collaborative and connected to high-profiles that can open doors everywhere. Lose the tie, put on your Nike's and come join Le Wagon.

I was part of Le Wagon batch 101 in Paris in October 2017. This has been super profitable and definitely worth the money and time investment. I am super grateful to the whole Wagon team for building this program, and I have already convinced lots of friends to follow me.
The main thing I would like to highlight is the efficiency of their learning method. In only 2 months, we are able to learn a whole new set of skills, which make us very autonomous when working on personal projects. I honestly didn’t expect we could go this far in 2 months: getting the same results on my own would have probably required more than a year and a huge amount of motivation. I joined Le Wagon as I was planning to launch a startup: what I learned at Le Wagon is enough to build a first version of my product and be the CTO of my company for the first 6-9 months, until I meet the person who will take it to the next technical level. The knowledge we have is enough to handle pretty much any tricky situation, and in case you do get stuck, the whole Wagon community is here to help ! Teachers and alumnis are always willing to help, even months after you left the program, which is one of the main benefits of being part of the community.

The efficiency of their learning program is based on amazing teachers, all driven towards making things crystal clear, and perfect tools. The online platform where you can find the course content and do your daily exercises is very handy. I think all schools should get inspiration from how things are done at Le Wagon !

Last but not least, there’s a great atmosphere and the place is very nice. They organize lots of events (talks, parties, …) where you can get in touch with inspiring people and meet new friends.

In short, I can only strongly recommend Le Wagon to anyone willing to learn how to code, and can’t think of any downside about it.