Le Wagon

My name is Remi and I just graduated from HEC, a business school in Paris. I'm currently launching a startup in the business travel space, and Le Wagon has been one of the most mind-blowing events in my life.

I joined Le Wagon 2 years ago, during my gap year. After internships at a Rocket Internet startup and a VC, I felt I really wanted to create my own company. But I felt incapable of building anything with my own hands. Some of my friends had joined Le Wagon, and had told me a lot about it.

I was the youngest guy of my batch (21 y/o at that time), but I felt welcome since day 1. I made friends with amazing people that were twice my age, and others that had completely different backgrounds. I enjoyed so much the unique peer-to-peer / learning-by-doing pedagogy I felt I had never learned anything so fast.

Following Le Wagon, I became a freelance developer for a few months, and I got back to school. I never stopped coding, and I built the first version of our startup's product. I still hang out with friends I met at Le Wagon, and the community has been of great help when I was lost in my code :)

I joined Le Wagon’s coding bootcamp in Paris to get real about learning the fundamentals of web development. Before that, I had been through dozens of online courses but I never really knew where to start so I just stagnated after a while. I knew I needed to change something if I wanted to make real progress.

That’s when I came across Le Wagon and it’s bootcamp format. With Le Wagon, you go back to school for 9 weeks and learn web development the same way you used to learn other stuff back in the days: by giving it your full and uninterrupted attention, surrounded by teachers and other students.

What I really love about Le Wagon’s coding bootcamp is that it’s designed to be comprehensive from the get go. No more a la carte, you’re on for the full menu. No need to pick random languages or difficulty levels. Those decisions have been made for you, which means that you can focus on what really matters.

After completing Le Wagon’s full stack program, I now understand the grammar of web development and I feel like I can pick online courses or books with more confidence to keep making progress on my own. It’s a great feeling.

Before Le Wagon, I had just finished a business degree in University. I liked it but I wasn’t too happy to go to a mega corporation and read excel sheets for 8 hours a day or work myself to sleep in a consulting company (nothing’s wrong with it if it’s your vibe).

I was really scared that coming from a business background and not knowing anything about code I wouldn’t keep up! The thing is that most of my group came from different backgrounds and places and had complete opposite experiences from me! Not only did that leave me at ease about my lack of knowledge in the matter but it created the amazing environment that is Le Wagon! 

The 9 weeks were very hard but so rewarding. It’s was constant shift between feeling on top of the world and feeling like you truly have no idea of what’s happening. The truth is that none of us gave up and I ended up presenting an amazing project - not bias at all :)

Now that I finished, I want to learn more and find a job as a junior developer. I feel like the course has given me more than enough skills to do so.

100% recommend it to anyone!

I learned more applicable skills in 9 weeks than I did in four full years of university (and I learned a lot in university!)

I took a pause from a career in investment banking and traveled from California to London just to attend Le Wagon as I had heard of the schools stellar reputation, and I was not disappointed. I didn’t know anyone in the country, and had no idea how to code (I actually thought CSS stood for Computer Science Something, whoops), so of course the process was a bit intimidating. Thankfully, the folks at Le Wagon seriously know how to run the camp to eliminate that anxiety from week one. Nobody here has an ego, and I think that culture is driven top down from management and the teachers, as well as in their selection process. Every single person was friendly, approachable, and helpful. Everyone wants to learn and progress together, and it makes for a really special time.

A word of advice: You will feel stupid. You will feel incompetent. You will DEFINITELY doubt whether or not you’ve got what it takes to code. That’s normal — and it’s all part of the process :slightly_smiling_face: By the end of the camp (especially in the last two weeks) you’ll be slinging apps left and right.

Le Wagon will always hold a very special place in my heart. I’ve made some great friends here, and know I have a place where I belong across the pond. Shout out to Batch 143!!!!

Before Le Wagon I had a stable job that I liked, but I didn't love. I needed a change, something that pushed me forward to a better and happier future. And that's when I found Le Wagon.

I'm not going to lie or sugar coat it. Those 9 weeks were the most intense weeks of my life so far. I had opposite feelings throughout (sometimes at the same time): I loved it and I hated it, I felt really smart and really dumb, I wanted to hug the teachers and punch them. On the first day, Shannon said 'you just gotta keep going and trust the process' and that's what I did. And it was painful. And I survived. Not only I survived, I had 2 prototypes done and was as proud of them as a mother is proud of her children. They were my babies, they were the result of 9 weeks of hard work, and I couldn't be happier.

I learned a lot and I made new friends, there was time to be serious and time to have fun (Cocktail Thursday!), and I ended up with a whole new set of skills. Now I have a new door open and a new future for me to explore.

Le Wagon is a great way to transition into tech as an entrepreneur. I am a former finance professional who has run my own business since 2009. I am excited by the changes in technology and want to transition my business towards using more technology.

As a business owner I considered it essential that I had the ability to control and understand the code my business utilises, which meant I needed to learn to code.

Le Wagon’s programme exceeded all my expectations. In the nine weeks we learnt full stack web-development and the final fortnight involved writing our own project.

Le Wagon combines an enthusiastic staff and a world class teaching platform to deliver knowledge. Best of all we retain access to our lectures and notes on the platform after the programme and I am already reaching out to the vast alumni network to help me with problems. It is very difficult to change career or direction, but Le Wagon’s programme is one of the best ways to do it.

After graduating with a liberal arts degree in 2015, I began working in an operations role at a financial services firm. I quickly realized my curiosity was not satiated by the work and moved into an application development team as a business analyst. This role brought me close enough to product development to know that this is an area I'd like to continue my career in, but I was missing the technical knowledge needed to properly engage.

I joined Le Wagon to gain a deeper technical skill set before beginning an MBA at MIT this fall. Taking this knowledge with me to business school will allow me to achieve 3 of my goals: 1) Meaningfully engage in the start-up community at b-school and have the skills to bring my ideas to life; 2) credibly pursue technical Product Management roles in the tech space for summer internships and full-time employment post-graduation; 3) relying on my foundational understanding of programming, take further courses at MIT and learn other languages such as python and R (I'm also interested in data analytics).

Having completed the 9 weeks, I can’t speak highly enough of the instructors, the environment they create or the quality of the coursework. 

Coding was the first time I’d felt such highs as I did when I’d finally coded my way through a tough problem, or such lows as getting stuck on something that seemed like it should be easy. What made my Le Wagon experience so valuable, was that when I hit the lows, I could always turn to the buddy I was paired with for that day or call over one of the many teachers and tutors available, to help talk me through it. If I had been studying alone, those moments would have brought my progress to a halt. 

Getting a dev job at the end of the course was not a selection criterion for me and I was therefore surprised to realize in the last few weeks, just how prepared I was to take that next step into a junior dev role, or to work on one of the freelance projects a fellow Le Wagon Alumni had taken on and was looking for help with. I have no doubt that I would have been able to get a job and found it rather regretful that I wouldn’t be able to continue learning in that manner for another year or two. 

It’s not possible to learn everything about anything in 9 weeks, but the Le Wagon approach did set me up to continue to learn and successfully figure things out on my own. I’m taking full advantage of continued access to all the resources I had as a student as I continue working on my group project and a personal project I’ve started. 

I would recommend the bootcamp at Le Wagon to anyone looking to catapult themselves into the world of web development. It's just an awesome experience.

Before starting the bootcamp, I was a product manager working closely with developers, eventually realising that development would be a better fit for me. I firstly tried to teach myself through the online route which was OK but didn't really suit the way I worked. A campus based course is obviously a lot more expensive but your learning happens so much quicker - being able to ask teachers questions face to face as well as coding in teams is so crucial, especially when you're first starting out.

In terms of the course, the curriculum is very structured and the dashboard is a fantastic resource tool that all students and alumni have access too. Super important when you start coding post-course. It's a massive learning curve and you have to be super on it but the teachers are great and create a great environment to learn as much as possible which is what it's all about. There were also a real mix of interesting people on the course and being part of the massive Le Wagon community is absolutely awesome and something I hope to stay involved in for the rest of my working life. Hope this helps anyone thinking of starting the bootcamp - do it!

I launched 2 startups in 2017. I had to stop the first one as the devs I was working with stopped coding because they were too suddenly unable to continue and I wasn’t able to code it myself at the time. I wanted to develop an app and improve the website for the second startup which is still running, so I decided to enroll to Le Wagon and learn coding. 
Now I am in a much better position to do so and work with developers. My experience at LeWagon was great in terms of learning and networking - great team. I definitely recommend any entrepreneur in tech with no coding skills to do the bootcamp.

Joining Le Wagon was one of the major turning points in my life. A year before Le Wagon, I was a fresh undergraduate with an engineering major that I assumed would be “hot” and lucrative (read: popular). Fast- forward a year and I found myself winding up in Shanghai with no real employment experiences in the past year, forced to reconsider my future. What prompted me to take a leap of faith and join Le Wagon was the urge to do something different. A year of countless job applications and rejections persuaded me to make that switch into coding, and I haven’t regretted it since.

Everyone who has gone through the program (or has a friend who’s gone through it) knows how utterly bizarre those 9 weeks felt. It’s a gruesome mixture of pain, frustration, and pleasure, but oddly enough, it doesn’t cease to become one of the most memorable and unforgettable experiences of our lives. For 9 weeks straight, every day is filled with difficult challenges and the satisfying opportunity to work with a soon-to-be friend or colleague. What I soon realized is that these 9 weeks were the shortest 9 weeks I’ve ever felt.

When it came to coding, my personal adventure was as frustrating as it was satisfying, constantly trying to learn a new craft and apply it at the same time. I had some prior experience, albeit elementary, with coding, but within the first week of the camp I felt like I was in uncharted territory. This didn’t scare me as much as it did ignite a kind of passion within that made me want to learn more and take on each daily challenge. As each week went on, this passion grew and was evenly matched by more complex challenges, eventually resulting in a final project for Aarusha Homes, a company in India that aims to provide sustainable and affordable housing for low-income migrant workers. Our team built a backend hotel management system to help modernize Aarusha Homes' hotel management procedures, from pen and paper practices into computerized guest tracking.

My story with Le Wagon doesn’t just end there. In fact, I have Le Wagon to thank for my current job. If not for its vast alumni network and also the skills it’s armed me with, I would not be in working in the role I am today.

I have just completed the Le Wagon bootcamp in London and had an amazing time!

The team in London is fantastic; all of the teachers are super enthusiastic and encouraging, very knowledgeable and willing to help. However, they won’t spoon feed you answers, instead, they will ask you questions and help you break down the issue into small parts so that you can reach the solution by yourself. The team manage to create a great balance of hard work (I was knackered by the end of every week) whilst maintaining a fun and relaxed atmosphere (I always looked forward to going back in on Monday).

The course is tough and can be slightly overwhelming at the beginning as you learn a lot of new information very quickly. The teachers keep repeating that “it will eventually click” and thankfully, it appears that it does! A lot of thought has clearly gone into the structure of the nine weeks and you keep building on the ideas that you have been exposed to earlier in the course. During the course (and forever after) you have access to all of the lectures (videos), lecture slides / notes, challenges and flashcards which is a fantastic resource. Ed also does a great job of organising loads of talks in the evenings with a variety of speakers and also provides sessions on writing CVs, looking for jobs, updating LinkedIn etc., all which were very useful.  

Another great thing about Le Wagon is that it is not all about the coding! You are able to develop your presentation skills, understand further what it takes to build a successful company and gain experience of working as a team within a development environment. As well as this, you meet an incredible mix of people from different backgrounds (and from all over the world!) all who are extremely motivated to learn a new skill.

Having worked in the Insurance industry for 4 years prior to attending Le Wagon, I was nervous about changing career paths and learning a new skill. In hindsight I am extremely thankful that I look the leap and enrolled on the course. Thank you to all of the Le Wagon team !

After graduating in Design and feeling stagnated in my Career, I discovered Le Wagon and really liked what I saw. At first I was very scared at the idea of a 9 week bootcamp, not only for being very intense, but also for it seeming a little too good to be true. I looked into it for a while, went to a couple of workshops, and finally decided to sign up and to finally take the challenge of learning code, and I can safely say that it was worth it.

After college, I was very happy with how practical the course is. There is a lot to do everyday, but there is always something new, interesting and exciting. When I did fall behind, all the resources were very accessible and helped me catch up. These resources are also great to have after the completion of the bootcamp, and I check them a lot when developing my own projects.

While intense, there was always a great atmosphere that helped us have the energy to keep up. The teachers were very capable and, more importantly, were great people that I still keep in touch with. The backgrounds of each student were very varied but we worked hard together and helped each other do our best. I learned a lot tackling problems together with other students.

I feel like one of the biggest strengths of the bootcamp is teaching us to work in a group. Not only in a generic motivational way, but with Github, a tool that is very important for developers. During the bootcamp we developed 2 applications in a group and we used methods that are standard in the industry, which makes us feel more prepared for professional work.

Having finished the bootcamp, It feels like I gained the tools to pursue all those ideas that I had but never did anything with. Having a background in Design, I discovered how much I like front-end, and am excited about the paths that are opened to me.