Le Wagon

Having suffered in math all throughout school and coming from a strictly liberal arts background, I was afraid programming would be too hard for my analytical brain to truly grasp in 9 weeks. Yet, the interest in the subject was big enough that I decided to pursue Le Wagon anyways. My experience during those 9 weeks shocked me. The long hours quickly translated into the steepest learning curve of my life to date. And although I didn't go in with the intention of becoming a developer afterwards, the passion transmitted by the teachers everyday, the holistic curriculum, and the supportive LW community have left in me curiosity about the programming world that I cannot shake off. I would recommend Le Wagon to anyone, from any background, with any interest or previous any skill-set. Understanding how the internet and the tech world works is an asset that cannot be dismissed in the 21st century and layering code on top of people's knowledge is one of the most powerful tools we have to positively impact the world. So if that's what you want to do, then I'd say jump on the Wagon!

I never really had the courage to actually get behind a computer and start learning to code all by myself. I thought that would be super complicated and I wouldn't be able to comprehend anything. I started to search for schools that teach me all of this in the best way possible.

The best approach for me to learn something is "learning by doing", so I searched for something doing just that. A boot camp would've been ideal and so my journey started. I decided to take part in the 9-week coding Bootcamp of Le Wagon.

I must say, at this point, it was the best decision I could've made.

Just right from the first day, everybody was very friendly. First thing in the morning was a lecture giving us students the knowledge we needed for the day. Most of the day we spent with coding together with another student (always someone else). During this time you had very friendly and capable teachers by your side and no matter the problem, they took their time to explain it, giving the optimal support to learn something completely new. In the evening all students came together again and started the live code. In it, we all worked together on an exercise. This created a very nice and comfortable atmosphere.

During the last two weeks, we worked on projects. The projects themselves are created from scratch and based on everything taught during the boot camp. Le Wagon provided us with the skills and the mindset shaping us into real web developers and with this knowledge we created some really amazing things.

Le Wagon is undoubtedly an unforgettable experience and it also brings people from all over the world together.

My story

Before joining Le Wagon coding bootcamp I was running an AdWords-agency for 5 years. Here, I shipped more than 200 landing pages on builders like PageWiz & Unbounce as well as on Wordpress to clients. So I was familiar with the tech and startup world but I just could not learn to code. I tried Codecademy and Udemy but did not follow through with the tutorials.

 

How I learned about coding bootcamps

The idea of attending a coding bootcamp had been in my mind since 2013, when I graduated from university and started the AdWords business. I briefly read about a coding bootcamp in my home city of Cologne, Germany. Yet I did not have the time and money to join then, and also later I never heard of this camp again. However, the idea remained on my bucket list. When I moved to Berlin in spring 2017 to participate in an accelerator program, I realized that lack of of tech knowledge in our team and thus a non-tech, non-scaling product was one of the reasons we got no follow up-investment. So I decided to change that and attend a coding bootcamp late 2017.

 

Why I chose Le Wagon coding bootcamp Berlin

At the time there were three coding bootcamps available in Berlin. I called them all. Only Le Wagon answered. I even emailed the other two, which I would not do normally, as I prefer direct contact and nevertheless: Nothing.

Philipp, the Driver at Le Wagon Berlin however was spot on. I called him up and we arranged for a walk in the same day. I spoke with him but also with the students from the current batch and actually, I was already sold at this point. The atmosphere was just right. Concentrated and hard working, yet relaxed and laid back at the same time. Also it was more appealing to me that Le Wagon focused on future founders as much as on future developers as my goal was to get the knowledge for my next project rather then get a junior dev position. So if you favor building a real product with a real team in 2 weeks rather than exercising for job interview questions - this is the place to be. However, alumni who want to get a dev job also get it. The mix is roughly one third founders, one third hired as developer and one third going in to a product management or consulting role. So it's up to you to chose.

 

Experience at the Bootcamp

Le Wagon is the future of learning. It combines lectures which are actually your teacher coding live, rather than reading slides, peer programming with your buddy through the day and the best e-learning platform I have ever seen. You can literally follow the Wagon examples step-by-step and it will work. The way knowledge is taught at Le Wagon is just modern and how it should be. The complete opposite of our education system in schools and universities mostly stuck in and producing for the early industrial society of the 19th century.  You can always ask a teacher to explain the problem and help you 1:1 when you get stuck. Stuff you would pay significant amounts for at places like Codementor. At the end of the day, the camp helped me to get over the initial threshold and start to code in Ruby, JS, SQL, HTML, CSS and then combine everything in Rails. At the end I built an Airbnb clone in one week and an MVP of a Job search site in two weeks with my team.

 

Skills I gained

Remember the scene from the Matrix when Neo wakes up and realises: "I know kung fu". Exactly that happened. I was able to go onto the developer and API sections of SaaS sites and understand what it is all about. I could finally consume the internet through the command line. Scraping data, using APIs to enrich it and outputting to the desired format. This was the magic I was doing. And I finally started my project: Automating online marketing A to Z from client onboarding, copy generation, landing page and ad creation for Google & Facebook. I built the first MVP of LeadConcierge in just three weeks. So I got everything and more which I could wish for.

 

The community

Actually, the biggest thing you get at Le Wagon is to connect with likeminded people. This is where the bootcamp overdelivers. Again, the staff at Le Wagon does a great job of connecting everybody in the group and forming friendships. Starting with a dinner for everyone on the first day and continuing until the demo day party on graduation. What’s more? In Berlin, free coworking is offered to alumni, so we can stay connected to the community and the following batches after the program while connecting to the over 3.000 alumni on a private slack platform. Here, tech advice, jobs etc. are plenty. Fun fact: While traveling in Silicon Valley I met a fellow alumnus from Brazil. So this is really a world wide community.

 

Wrap-up

Come for the tools. Stay for the network. If you read till this point you should imagine by now, that I loved my experience during and after Le Wagon in Berlin. I got all the skills I expected and friendships I really care about. I would recommend the camp to anyone willing to learn. It transformed the way I think and enabled me to finally build a scalable product. You want to know what I mean? If your only tool is a hammer, you treat every problem as a nail. Yet now I have a lot of different tools in my arsenal enabling me to think like an engineer and tackle problems with automation in a scaling way. And you will have too. Take my advice: Check out the Wagon events in your city or on Youtube and once you're ready embark on this journey!

 

LE WAGON advertises with the slogan “Change your life, learn to code”. For me this became absolutely true. The important thing to mention: Coding did not, but Le Wagon did! Here are 4 reasons why:

1. The teachers

They are specialists in their field, travel the world to teach and even speak at conferences. On top of that, they are graded at the end of every batch, so it’s kind of a natural selection and only the best of the best survive.

2. The Buddy-System

Every day, after having been taught the new content, you get a new buddy from the other classmates. This is a genius move, not just because you get to know all the class members very well (helps a lot for the final projects), but especially because it pushes the engagement of the entire class. No one wants to be the “loser that nobody wants to work with”. So as soon as you feel that you are behind, you put in even extra hours in the morning or the evening or the weekend. You can imagine what happens when everybody is doing that! Yes, it pushes performance to new heights!

3. The atmosphere

You have team events, you have Friday beers (and free beer all the time) and through the buddy system new best friends for life guaranteed. We were 18 people from 10 different nationalities. The mix of cultures and backgrounds makes Le Wagon exceptional!

4. The Alumni Network

I doubt that there is a course with a better network. To date, more than 20 locations worldwide. Thousands of alumni that all went through the “hell of Le Wagon” and that are crazily responsive for whatever you need help with. Le Wagon has Slack channels for jobs, events, growth-hacking tools … Whatever you need, the community will help you!

Coding is a skill i wanted to acquire for a long time. While life as a strategy consultant was thrilling and rewarding in many ways, a sense of monotony was sinking in over time - every (long) day was starting to look the same. Above all, I exceedingly felt like I wasn't doing enough - I wanted to be at the front line tackling and solving problems rather than taking the bird's eye view and finding rather high-level solutions. 

I enjoy self-learning and as such became passionate about the idea of learning how to code as one avenue to actually do more. I signed up to codeacademy and started learning front-end languages (html & css) whenever the job allowed. However, coding is like an endless sea - I felt overwhelmed rather fast because of the many languages out there, and the lack of knowledge as to how it could potentially all tie together at some point. 

This is when I gave up on trying it on my own and began searching for coding schools. A university friend of mine took the 9 week coding bootcamp at Le Wagon in Brazil a year back, so naturally I reached out to him. He offered unwavering praise for the class, so I decided to give it a go and applied for the batch due to commence in January 2018 in Berlin. 

5 months later I can say he was 100% right. The bootcamp was worth it - something I found hard to believe beforehand considering the price tag of coding bootcamps these days. Spending 8-10 hours each and every day learning & applying concepts with the ability to ask as many questions as you like along the way was the perfect way to get off the ground in this endless sea of coding. After a month or so, I felt the equivalent of what young players in professional sports refer to as "the game slowing down" - concepts started to tie together and you'd start to really understand how frameworks (in our case ruby on rails) function from within. 

On a sidenote, the 9 weeks were not only a great learning experience, but also an incredibly fun time. Great people (with no exceptions!), evening get-to-togethers, fun activities and cocktail nights led to countless memories that will stay with me forever. 

Over the last 2 months since the bootcamp ended I've continued coding a few projects, the last being a successful coding challenge for a blockchain company. Quite honestly I am amazed by the progress that is possible in such a short time frame, and have Le Wagon and their wonderful teachers to thank for the getting me off the ground and triggering my curiosity to continue learning and getting better each and every day!

I studied business but always been interested in Tech and Entrepreneurship. After my bachelor before starting to think about what is next I wanted to learn something I have been always interested in but never really accomplished to fully understand - Coding. Through friends I heard of LeWagon and applied for Batch-92 in Berlin. The application process is super smooth and after a Skype Interview with Philipp I was admitted to the Bootcamp.

The preparation was quite intense since you had to do a lot of courses online and had to start digging into the topic of coding. Fortunately, when the Bootcamp started many of the topics mentioned in the preparation were readressed. However, I can really recommend to do the preparation because otherwise it takes way longer to understand basic principles of coding. 

This is also one of the things I really really loved about LeWagon. I always struggled with coding since I had problems to make the step from understanding the principle to execute it in a real life example. And LeWagon made it so freakin easy. Every day started with a lesson about the topic of the day and afterwards you could directly apply the newly learned skills in numerous challenges that were sometimes hard but super rewarding. When you had a problem you could always ask your coding buddy (pair programming is awesome) or if there was no sight of the light at the end of tunnel you could just write a ticket and a TA came pretty swift to help you understand your problem and solve. It was never the case that you just got the solution. The teachers and TAs always tried to help you to solve the problem on your own. In combination with the real life challenges one really learned how to tackle problems on your own and to be indipendent in the outside world.

Besides the great learning concept I want to mention three other things that I really appreciated during my time at LeWagon - People, Overall-Concept and Organization.

We were a group of roughly 30 students and really became a well functioning group. Through the daily chaning coding buddies or the projects at the end of the Bootcamp you really got to know everyone. Besides that, several events and lunches increased the team spirit even more. The organization of the BootCamp was tremendous. Philipp, the driver, put every second of his time into making this BootCamp a tremendous success. He organized a lot of great events around the BootCamp, from Yoga-Sessions to talks with Developers and people from the Start-Up Scene. And that is also the point where LeWagon, in my opinion, stands out from other BootCamps. The whole concept is focused on not only learn how to code but also how to develop a promising product. This is one of the most helpful things when you head out to find a job as a product manager or developer.

To summarize, LeWagon was a lifetime-experience that I never wanna miss and I can really recommend to everyone that are not only interested in learning a new skill but also how to apply this skill in products that customers love.

After reading all the reviews about various bootcamps I was a bit sceptical about le Wagon's reputation because it seemed to be too good to be true. After finishing the 9-weeks-bootcamp I can say for myself: it is really like that.

Besides the obvious, that you get loads of information and knowledge in a very short period of time, I was amazed by the community le Wagon creates. Not only do you have lifelong access to all the slides and code, it also gets updated on a regular base and they add more and more online courses you can attend afterwards if you want to proceed your career as a developer. But not only that: we were 22 guys from 12 countries, we had students who just graduated school to a daddy from Greece with two kids. We had so much fun during and after the badge, a lot stayed in Berlin afterwards and we are still hanging out. 

It is truely a great experience I can just highly recommend to everyone without a doubt!

After graduating in management at Université Paris-Dauphine, I wasn’t sure about my aspirations. Because of the lack of other options, I started a master in finance. As I cared about my freedom and my creativity, I realized quickly that I wasn’t cut out for this kind of life. I decided to apply to Le Wagon Montreal (batch #125) and thus to quit my studies and to start coding. It was a risk but also probably the first good decision I made concerning my education. Indeed, studying at Le Wagon was a very good experience. In such a short period of time, I acquired the basis every web developer should have. It made me able to conceive and build a basic product as well as to collaborate with other developers and, above all, it equipped me with the necessary skillset to keep on learning and build new competencies by myself. Learning to code is a long and non-linear journey, the stronger your bases are, the faster and smarter you’ll be. Le Wagon’s teaching method is pioneering in the way that it provides the student not only with a general understanding of some languages but with a deep mastering of what is fundamental: the skeleton, the way everything is set-up. It is this particular combination of hard and soft skills that make a student able, at the end of only three months, to entirely build a website from the idea to the deployment. I am now pursuing my learning by working on various projects and will start next year a master in computer science in London, at UCL. I sincerely recommend this program and the wonderful and committed team of Montreal.

I attended Le Wagon from March to May 2018 in Milan (batch#131).    I have a business background, I've studied management and worked in strategy consulting afterwards. I've decided to enroll in Le Wagon because I've always been interested in digital products and I wanted to learn more about how to build them. Now that it's over I can say that it was a great decision and I'm continuing to learn how to code.    Some factors make Le Wagon your best shot if you're looking for a coding bootcamp.   Le Wagon syllabus has been polished throughout the years. The approach is very practical and it offers a wide overview over the main tools you'll need as a developer. You won't need previous programming experience, just a lot of willingness to learn.   The staff of Le Wagon Milan: teachers and assistants were very competent, passionate and cool people to deal with. It was the first bootcamp organized by Le Wagon in the city, yet everything went great thanks to them.   The average day at Le Wagon comprises a rather short lecture (1.5h) in the morning, followed by a day of programming practice. All the exercises are channeled through an online platform, which has lots of resources available for the students also after the program ends.    The last two weeks students get divided in groups to work on a final project, which we eventually presented at a major Italian incubator. It's pretty unbelievable to be able to build a proper digital product after such a short period!    During the 9 weeks of the bootcamp you'll get an intense introduction to the world of coding. You'll have to continue learning afterwards - even the best developers have to - but you'll have all the tools to build web applications on your own or apply for junior dev positions.    Overall, my review of the bootcamp is extremely positive. One word of caution though: what you get out of the bootcamp is up to you. It is tough, the days are long and sometimes you'll feel frustrated. However, if you will enjoy learning how to code - like I did - putting in the work that it requires to get the most out of it won't feel as tough.   For who do I recommend Le Wagon? I strongly recommend it to whoever feels interested in learning more about coding. Not everybody who goes through Le Wagon necessarily becomes a developer afterwards, but everybody who attends gains an invaluable experience. Learning to code empowers people after all.

I joined le Wagon Berlin 6 months ago. In retrospect, I’m fortunate to claim that it has been one of the best decision I have ever taken.    For the context:  We had just launched our startup and recently acquired market confirmation. We needed to scale up and therefore, update our MVP. Our original goal was for one of us to do the course in order to gain enough skills to be able to hire a CTO and/or manage a dev team.   The bootcamp:  You start learning the fundamentals of programming, moving onto front-end and design, wrap-it-up with Rails, the framework that puts everything together and finish up with 3 weeks of concrete project development.  The starting weeks are intense but teachers are very dedicated to making sure you’re not left behind.  However, you need to be fully committed to succeed and take the most out of it.  It’s emotional payback time during the final project weeks when you figure out that you can build an entire web application from scratch when, 1.5 months ago, you thought that Java was an abbreviation for Javascript.   After the bootcamp:  I figured out I really liked to code and decided to build our new product. With the skills acquired you’re able to tackle all of it: Conception, design, development, server setup, testing, rolling out and maintenance. At that point, Le Wagon had further proven its value with its great community as I was always able to reach out to teachers and ask for advice.    To wrap-it-up, here are some of the key aspects you gain after completing le Wagon: - Have an idea? Just build, launch and scale it! Ruby on Rails is very powerful to launch products very fast - More than just coding: Get notions of product management, design and UX, all set in a business perspective  - Understand developers and learn to communicate effectively with them - Once you understand the fundamentals of programming, it’s easier to branch out to other languages - You’re part of a growing and very supportive community - Have access to great and constantly updated resources/learning material   Side-note: For those worried about the perception that coding is for geeks, math enthusiasts etc. please put those thoughts aside, those are complete bullshit.    Do yourself some good: Get enrolled, struggle first and succeed at last. You will learn very powerful and actionable skills in a very short amount of time while behind around great people. 

  Hi everybody, I'm Marco, and I'm happy to say that after studying with Le Wagon I feel comfortable calling myself a Junior Full-stack Developer.   Coding was a big career change for me, but I began to approach a bit of coding on my own a few months before LeWagon. I recommend this strongly as it helped me a lot in the Bootcamp, even if the daily lessons were still very challenging. Le Wagon Bootcamp is just that: a chance to challenge yourself while taking part in a big family that supports you.   Every day was a big learning curve (for everyone) and sometimes a student can feel frustrated, which is one of the most common feelings in the coding world...but at the same time, that frustration can fuel you to rise above difficulties along the way. For instance, at a certain point in the Bootcamp, I was ready to create a WebApp like AirBnB from scratch, and at that moment I felt invincible :D   In my personal experience, LeWagon brings you and your mind to the next level through a very good learning journey, where different and well-prepared teachers and assistants help you understand the core of the daily lesson.   I found LeWagon Staff very patient, polite and prepared, and ready to go above and beyond for their students.   All this Staff, your Colleagues, and the people from all over the world in LeWagon media give you access to amazing support channels (posting jobs, help, news...) with neverending new technical material posted. You are suddenly part of a global support network, that to me felt like a big new family (I got along really well with the teachers and other students!)   That's the unique power of LeWagon. From the moment you sign up, you are never without support.   Would I suggest LeWagon to whoever wants to change his/her life? Yes  Would I pay again to redo the course? Yes Did LeWagon help me find an interview/job/internship after the course? Yes, and their global network makes me feel that if I needed to relocate I could ask them for help again. The Final Project was useful? Yes, with LeWagon you will build a Portfolio without even realizing (really helpful for future applications).   Please know that it will not be easy. Even as a beginner you have to have a real interest in code and a wish to learn. But if you have that, Le Wagon will support you from the beginning and give you the tools you need to start working. I recommend Le Wagon. 

Coming from agricolture background, i wasn`t happy with my studies and for this reason, I decided to get more involved in product development by joining Le Wagon. 

The program has two key strengths: 
- A very hands-on approach focusing on product development's methodology and workflow (heroku, git, etc.)
- A very demanding curriculum that teaches in-depth programming basics and software architecture, Ruby, Rails, Html, CSS, JavaScript....

Le Wagon main strength lies in its solid program that teaches both essential technical skills and a strong product mindset, in fact at the end of the course the students are asked to think, develop and present their personal projects to the public and potential investors.
The group of students also really contributed to the experience. Bright people from all over the world, with diverse backgrounds, and the format of the course, allowed us to really create a bond and learn from each other. The bootcamp at LeWagon allowed me to really dive into the world of code and gave me the tools to keep on learning. 
After a week since i finished the course i already got a job offer from my ex company where i was working before joining LeWagon.
I highly encourage anybody considering joining Le Wagon as it is an experience that will continue to give you benefits even after the 9 week classes.