Le Wagon

Before Le Wagon I was active as an entrepreneur and working in startups. There, my tasks were always business related as I studied Economics & Business Administration. I was working a lot on spreadsheets, presentations and spent a lot of time in meetings. The part I loved most was building the strategy and business model as well as trying to find the next investor.

Even though, I loved the strategizing, one thing always bothered me. For each and every idea I had, may it be within the current startup or for a new one, I never could start myself. There was always an IT guy missing. I wanted to be able to build at least prototypes of these ideas and communicate what I want with the developers. This was the first reason to learn how to code.

The second reason was that I want to be able to define the future. For that, I felt the need to understand what is actually possible with technology. What can I expect from the developers? What business models and ideas are actually doable? And which way is a good one to go there?
Last, but not least, what brought me to Le Wagon was that I also wanted to learn to build products, not just features. I wanted to figure out how you can go from zero to a product that people actually want. And especially how to do it quick.
To conclude, the urge of understanding tech made my decision to learn coding and to learn it at Le Wagon.

So, now, I’m job hunting. Coding was so much fun, that I want to do it professionally and learn a lot more. However, I’m pretty open as I would love to combine my newly adapted dev skills as well as my passion for creating and strategy. First, I am going to apply in some startups or bigger companies so that there hopefully is someone who can mentor me a bit. And after some month / years I want to go back founding an own company from an idea that I validate during the job. So, right now I‘m creating my own portfolio page with the two projects from the bootcamp as well as another own small app, apply a lot and work on my dev skills.

What really helped me to get the confidence to apply for dev jobs was, especially, our final project at Le Wagon: Shuffle (shuffle-jobs.com), an tinder-like app to connect you with the right companies in a matter of minutes to find your next dream job! Another, awesome “side effect” is that I am now confident to learn everything quick and that I am able to dive deeper into tech. Further, the great community within my batch as well as the 6000+ community didn’t just lead me to find new friends but is also an amazing resource for support and ideas. Thanks, Le Wagon, for boosting my capabilities and creating such an amazing experience.

Prior to Le Wagon I worked in Finance, primarily as a commodities trader on Wall Street. In 2016 I saw some of my colleagues and associates leave the business to attend coding bootcamps. It was then I realized that there was an entire tech industry I knew almost nothing about; an industry with much more potential than the one I was in.

As electronic trading became the norm, programming skills became more valuable than trading experience itself. In my industry, companies that were hiring wanted P.h.d. level academic backgrounds with advanced algorithmic programming experience, so I figured that I should at least get started somewhere! I began taking a few online courses and found that web development was really interesting, requiring both technical thinking and creativity. My goal was to become either a front end or full stack developer. I tried the self-taught route, but like most people found that not only was there too much to learn, but difficulty in figuring out what to learn.

Fast forward a year later. Taking the bootcamp at Le Wagon Barcelona gave me the skills needed to build an app from start to finish.  It's amazing what can be accomplished in such a short amount of time. The atmosphere is supportive and collaborative, and I've made more friends in 2 months than I have in the last two years. I've been working on finding a job as a developer since the end of the bootcamp, and already had a technical interview through my connections at Le Wagon.

Have you ever been in front of a tech product and had the feeling that you did not understand at all how it had been built? That was exactly how I felt before doing Le Wagon. 

I was in my last year of a degree in International Business Economics when I realized I wanted to do something more. I started asking myself: “What do I want to do next?“, and so I started thinking about what I had enjoyed the most during the university, what were my interests, etc... And when doing that reflection, I realized that my favorites classes were always those in which we talked about tech products and entrepreneurship. 

“But I don’t know much about technology…“, was my next concern. I was open to keeping learning new skills, so I started looking for boot camps and then I found Le Wagon, which offered exactly what I was looking for.

And now, as a recent graduate of Le Wagon, I can say that the program fully met my expectations. The days at Le Wagon were very practical, which helped me a lot to consolidate the concepts and learn their day to day use. Moreover, every day we were assigned a buddy with which we had to do some exercises, which was a really good opportunity to learn from our colleges. But most importantly, I would like to say that the Bootcamp was not only a big chance to learn technical skills, but also to meet really interesting people from all around the globe. The vibes during the 9 weeks were just amazing!!! Energy, motivation, and eagerness to learn were the air I breathed every day.

Thanks to Le Wagon, now I feel ready to start a career in Product Management.

My name is Mireia. Originally from Spain, I was part of Batch 341 of Le Wagon in Barcelona.

First of all, I have to say that I was a little worried because I didn’t have any background in tech. I studied business management. And before the bootcamp I was working at a coworking space in Barcelona as a Community Manager. So my knowledge about the tech world was more related to business and not in a technical way.

My first contact with programming was because of my brother. He was learning computer science and one day while he was coding a videogame I asked him how he did it. Once he started explaining it to me was just amazed! I thought that it was incredible all the things you were able to do with something called “methods” and with a couple of parenthesis.

Then I decided to start digging into programming to know at last the basics and my curiosity grew to a point where I started talking to everyone about it. A friend of mine told me that if I was really interested in it the best way to get started would be a coding bootcamp. He recommended to me the one at Le Wagon. His girlfriend did it one year ago and she was very happy after doing it. And now she was currently working in a company as a backend developer.

I looked it up and had great reviews. The program was very complete and they seemed to have a nice community of people so I decided to join it.

When I show it to one of my friends who is a software developer he couldn’t believe that they would be able to teach so much in just 9 weeks.

Since the very first moment Le Wagon felt like the perfect place to me. It didn’t feel like a regular school at all. It was an open space full of awesome and smart people from all over the world ready to do their best and learn as much as possible. I felt like I was back at the coworking space.

Because I am someone who believes that the only way to learn is by doing, I really enjoyed the format of the bootcamp. We had one and a half hours of lecture in the morning and we were solving different challenges in pairs for the rest of the day for the first 7 weeks.

In the last two weeks we had a big project to build our own web application from scratch. When that started was the moment when I realised: “Wow! I actually know how to do this!” I couldn’t believe it. After just 7 weeks we developed an awesome product called BoostIt, which I am really proud of and is now part of my portfolio.

I cannot be anything but grateful to Le Wagon’s team. They were very helpful, inspirational and they never said no. It didn’t matter how challenging anything we wanted to build was. They helped me to realize that it doesn’t matter the background or experience that you have, if you really want, you can learn how to code.

So now, do you want to know what’s the best part of the bootcamp?

The fact that the end is the starting point for your new life! You don’t say goodbye on your last day. You say “see you soon, friends!” Once you finish you are part of this big community they have and you are still in touch with all the TAs, your colleagues and other people that did the bootcamp.

Now I cannot wait to keep learning and growing as a full stack developer. The tech world is what I like and I am looking forward to see how far the projects I am currently working on go.

Thank you Le Wagon Barcelona #341!

Eu me inscrevi para o curso de desenvolvedor web do Lê Wagon com o objetivo de entender melhor a dinâmica de programação. Como fundador de uma Startup de tecnologia tinha um problema de assimetria de informação gigantesco perante aos programadores. Era impossível ter uma noção a respeito do tempo e dos custos necessários para a construção das funções exigidas. Tendo esse objetivo em mente, acredito que o Lê Wagon até mesmo superou as minhas expectativas. Hoje me considero apto a entender e até mesmo orientar processos.

Além disso, é importante acrescentar que a vivência de trabalho em grupo, criação e gerenciamento de projetos, introdução a design de produtos, além de conceitos de marketing essenciais para a construção de um projeto, tais como a definição de uma persona, mostram que o título de desenvolvimento web não está adequado ao que vocês oferecem. O curso acrescenta skills que superam muito o de programação.

Por fim, além dos skills técnicos anteriormente abordados gostaria de salientar os quesitos sociais. Eventos, um ambiente descontraído e todo o cuidado com as pessoas presentes dão a estrutura necessária para que os estudantes  suportem a situação de stress a que são submetidos durante as 9 semanas do curso.

Na minha opinião o Lê Wagon não vende um curso de programação e sim uma experiência. E isso supera muito um curso de programação. Eu fiz Work Experience
durante 3 meses nos Estados Unidos. É impressionante como eu consigo traçar um paralelo entre os dois. É algo que lembrarei com carinho, que contarei histórias aos amigos e que ficará marcado em mim para sempre.

Por fim, gostaria de agradecer mais uma vez pelo serviço prestado, por toda a atenção e carinho dos professores e principalmente pelo excelente trabalho de condução da Bootcamp Manager Milene.

My name is Isac Giuk Kim and I am from Ecuador. My major in university was marketing; however, I decided to teach English in China. After two years in China, I decided to hop onto a different career path, a web-developer. I have always been interested in learning coding for many reasons. First, by learning how to code I would have more of a hands-on approach when marketing products or services if I decided to work in marketing. Second, coding would allow me to transform my ideas and others into reality. Third, as a web-developer, you can work remotely, which is perfect for me because I love to travel and experience different cultures. Last, there are many job opportunities for web-developers. For these reasons I started taking coding online courses, but it was not easy for me to do them so I started my search for coding boot camps and found Le Wagon.   My time in Le Wagon was just incredible. I thought it was a very well structured program. We would learn to code everything from scratch and then used tools to shorten our code. This approach of teaching allowed me to have a better understanding of how the code worked. With the buddy system and daily challenges, it helped me comprehend the code better because we would explain to other classmates the process of the code of the day. All the teachers and teacher assistants were very knowledgeable and helped us to not only complete the challenges but to understand it and comprehend it. I have emphasized the understanding of the process of coding because without understanding there is no comprehension and without it, we cannot grow as web-developers.   I finished Le Wagon in December 2019. At the moment, my group and I are still working to improve our previous projects from our time in Le Wagon, while looking for jobs using the tools provided by Le Wagon. One of our projects is Airpet, an application that allows you to rent a pet from a shelter to support the shelter and allow the animals to become more social. Our second project is Uproot, an application that will match you with a city that will satisfy all your needs. There will be more projects to come.

I was introduced into the business world quite early at 18 years old and since that day, even during the university years I searched for new opportunities to make money. But at some point that game becomes boring and I felt like I hit the ceiling and I couldn’t move forward. I was like that for a couple of years. Then I remembered that when I was very young I was curious about coding, so I began searching for articles on this topic. Day by day, course by course I started to feel what code was about and at some point I wanted more. I felt the need of guidance and of a good way of learning, a program built by professionals and not the usual “Learn this in 2019” or “Why you should learn that in 2019". In those days I found out about Le Wagon…

Why did I choose Barcelona? First of all I wanted the program in english, second I wanted a city that I liked and last, but not least I wanted to feel that the team was the one for me. I watched some videos online and I decided that Gus de Vita, the founder of Le Wagon Barcelona could be the answer, then I read all that I could find about the rest of the team and finally the interview with Ellyn convinced me that this was the best choice. And it was!

The experience was amazing, the team was great and very supportive and my colleagues were like “handpicked”. Getting me out of my office and into this “it crowd” was the best thing that I did for me in a long time. So not only that I learned a lot about coding, but also I got to change the way I see my life. Learning to code changed even the way I think when I have to solve a problem that has nothing to do with it.

9 weeks of intense coding, over 20000 lines of code, one product http://www.epicenter.live/ and friends are the things that I got in Barcelona and I am so proud of them.

Now, my life is not boring anymore because learning to code is a lifetime job. I continue to learn online because Le Wagon offers courses even after the boot camp is over and I am preparing to become a better full stack web developer.

I was working in hospitality and as an administrator for most of my life. I’m 32 years old now and things have started to feel a bit stale for me. Felt I needed more creativity in my life hence why I looked into web development.

Signing up for the Le Wagon coding bootcamp in Barcelona was definitely one of the best decisions I've ever made. It is a very intensive course, often able to make you feel frustrated, but the staff is incredibly supportive and always there to help. You get to work on great projects and, by the end of the course, you'll be able to create web applications and also learn the entire technical workflow of how to work in a team.

I got a job in Barcelona, not quite related with the bootcamp, but now I’ll have the chance to further my knowledge and visit the school whenever possible!
You can expect great support from the staff after the bootcamp and access to a lot of learning material and perks - Kitt for life!!!

Désormais alumni du Wagon Bordeaux, j’ai effectué la formation cet automne. J’ai passé 9 semaines entouré par une équipe de professeurs et un staff toujours présent et à l’écoute. Mes camarades ont également été un très grand soutien alors que pour la plupart ils étaient, comme moi et n’avaient jamais codé.Nous sommes une promotion très soudée, l’entraide au court de la formation a été un réel plaisir et l’est encore aujourd’hui. L’ambiance avec l’équipe comme avec les élèves était parfaite.D’un point de vue technique la formation du Wagon est très complète. Une fois la formation terminée, nous avons toutes les clés en main pour réussir dans le domaine de la tech.
Bonne chance aux futurs alumni et un grand merci à toute l’équipe du Wagon Bordeaux.

Dubernard Lucas.

Batch 325 - octobre 2019 - Quand j'ai cherché une formation pour apprendre à coder et compléter mon bagage d'UX/UI designer, tous les avis que l'on me donnait renvoyait vers le Wagon. Après le travail préparatoire et la sélection, les cours ont commencé et j'ai été plus que satisfait. Si les cours sont très intenses, la pédagogie permet d'assimiler rapidement les concepts et les mettre en application tout aussi rapidement. Surtout on est en permanence entouré par l'équipe de teacher assistants qui nous accompagnent et nous guident. Le Wagon est une formation d'une intensité pédagogique et humaine incroyable et je le recommande à toute personne qui souhaite apprendre à coder.

J’ai fait la formation du Wagon en octobre dernier et je ne regrette vraiment pas mon choix. L’équipe est vraiment top ! Les professeurs nous transmettent leur savoir avec bonne humeur, ce qui est indispensable vu le rythme de la formation.

En effet la formation est très dense puisque la promesse est forte. Apprendre à coder en 9 semaines paraît presque impossible sur le papier et pourtant tous les étudiants ressortent avec bases très solides pour coder et surtout approfondir des notions beaucoup plus facilement. La méthode pédagogique du Wagon est à mon sens géniale et permet d’atteindre cet objectif très ambitieux. Elle permet également d’assimiler beaucoup mieux et de devenir autonome puisqu’on ne nous donne pas la solution directement mais plutôt des pistes pour y arriver. N’oublions pas que le quotidien des développeurs c’est de résoudre des problèmes, il est donc indispensable d’acquérir cette autonomie.

La notion d’entraide est aussi très présente et importante puisque tous les étudiants rencontrent des moments difficiles (frustrations, inquiétudes) pendant la formation. Le fait d’avoir un partenaire différent chaque jour nous permet de rencontrer tout le monde et de créer une cohésion très forte au sein de la promo. Il n’y aucune compétition ce qui permet de se développer et de s’épanouir tellement plus vite. Durant les deux dernières semaines, nous travaillons sur des projets de groupes et cette cohésion fait vraiment la différence.

Malgré les coups durs sur certains jours de la formation, j’ai été capable de coder un projet de A à Z. Avec le recul j’ai appris énormément en deux mois et on ne s’en rend pas forcément compte quand on a la tête dans le guidon pendant la formation mais à la sortie c’est vraiment gratifiant.

Je recommande vivement cette formation pour tous ceux qui souhaitent apprendre à coder même si vous n’avez aucune base. Gardez néanmoins à l’esprit que c’est une formation de deux mois et qu’il faut bien entendu continuer à approfondir ses connaissances, se perfectionner et découvrir de nouveaux langages.