Le Wagon

I spent 5 years of my life studying Psychology. After those years when I finally obtained Master’s in Clinical Psychology, I went full on into working in very challenging environments, such as prison or hostel for homeless people struggling with addictions and mental health problems. As much as I enjoy helping people and being a psychologist I felt like I’m missing something. One day I finally let myself to be convinced by my best friend to give coding a go. Next thing I know I’m at Le Wagon! I boy don’t I love it!

Making a decision to join this particular Bootcamp was not an easy process. The market is full of different opportunities and options to learn to code. I knew that personally, I feel much more comfortable when learning in a group and being supported both by my colleagues and teachers. So having realized that I started my research. Le Wagon was coming on top of my searches every time but then there was one thing that really concerned me. By design, I’m a rather skeptical person, so when I saw all those Le Wagon’s awesome reviews online and the fact that I couldn't find any bad ones really put me off. However, that said, I was still curious about them so I decided to give it a go.

First weeks were extremely exhausting for me. I have no technical background so everything was so new and so intense! Surviving this early stage was possible for me only because of the buddy system and incredible support from all teachers and TAs. I was a little bit afraid of working every day with another colleague every day as I feared being judged. As it turns out I couldn’t be more wrong. At the end of the day we were in the same boat and we were going through the same problems. That made as close and we knew we can count on each other.

Project weeks were the best by far! That was the time to put all that knowledge into practice. Working in my team was like a rollercoaster at moments. We really wanted to build an amazing app so there were frictions between us, however, those moments made us even closer and made our work even better. We coded together, we solved problems together and we were laughing together.

To sum it up, if I could give any advice it would be, don’t hesitate to ask questions, don’t hesitate to ask for help, and more importantly, don’t hesitate to admit that you don’t understand something. At Le Wagon there’s no need to pretend, that’s not a race to be the best. Le Wagon is about you learning as much as you can and to enjoy the experience to the fullest!

After working as an accountant for 7 years and using various softwares at work, I wanted to make real changes for the users. After an intense research of coding bootcamps in London, I found that Le Wagon had the best syllabus for me as a non-CS degree graduate with the time period and competitive price. After 9 weeks of Le Wagon, I can confidently say that it was one of the best decisions I made in my career path and it provided me a great start of my new journey as a developer. All staff are super friendly and really care about individual's success in the course. It also has very broad network and support from Le Wagon graduates all over the world! Once you attend Le Wagon, you are in the Le Wagon family for life!

I’ve been doing a masters in Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at LSE this year and decided to take the Le Wagon course (batch #240) during my exam period as a supplement to my studies. Previously I worked in NGOs and social science research, but always felt a pull to gain technical skills and learn how to build things on my own. I wasn’t very confident I would be able to do it, and even during the first few weeks of the course I felt slow and behind. But thanks to the thorough lectures every morning, the individualized support provided by TAs throughout the day, and  - crucially - the daily reassurance from every staff member at Le Wagon, two months later I graduated knowing 1000% more than when I started. Coding still isn’t easy, but Le Wagon gives its students the tools to be able to continue learning the material and honing in on certain areas depending on the project - so it doesn’t really feel over. I never would have been able to do this on my own and would retake it in a heartbeat.

I'm Paulo, 25 Years old, I was not able to finish secondary school in my country but I got lucky to work as a customer service representative, after that moved to Japan and started a new life in Tokyo with my wife.

After some time working in the construction sector in Japan, I realized that it was not what I wanted, since a kid I've been in love with tech and interested in programming. So I decided to look for new opportunities and change my life, so after some research I found Le Wagon Coding boot camp and decided to enroll for the next session.

I'm part of Le Wagon's Tokyo Batch #252, that started back in April 15 2019, it was an experience i never forget because really helped me to learn what i always wanted.

1. The teachers: They are amazing and well-prepared!, The main Teacher was always ready to answer questions and to help you, if you have a problem they will figure it out in matter of seconds. They will sit beside you and help you to reason the problem until you understand it. Is very difficult to ask something they don't know. And that is for the other TA's too, All of them are really experienced developers. And of course when is time to chill they are really nice people to have a nice chat too!.

2. The Program: I'm did not study programming before, and I'm impressed that after only two months I can call myself a Full stack developer. All the program is really well thought, made to help beginners understand, but of course you have to be prepared if you have no experience in coding, so I recommend finishing all the Preparation work they provide before the boot camp, This is a very intense program and you have to be really interested in learning to keep going. All the valuable experience I gained working with awesome teammates and with my teachers is really helpful after the boot camp.

3. Job Assistance: Le Wagon staff is still sharing Job opportunities and organizing events to help us find a Job. It's been a week after my batch finished and still searching for a Job, But I'm pretty satisfied with the help they are providing us to find a Job.

I feel like my life has already changed after Le Wagon and I hope to keep growing as a developer finding a Job in a good company in Tokyo, Keep in touch with my teammates and teachers. This is an experience I will never forget!.

I am 29 years old, I graduated from Rennes Business School and started working for Neslté France just after my studies. I worked there for almost 5 years as a digital manager. I really enjoyed my career there.

In October 2018, I decided to quit my job and start a new life in Lille. I took advantage of this break to develop technical skills through the Wagon Coding Bootcamp Lille. https://www.lewagon.com/fr/lille

I'm part of batch #257 started in April 2019 and I really enjoyed my experience at The Wagon!

> The staff is great: very good explanations, great attention to the progress and the feeling of each - the courses are well developed and explained. => I did not know anything about code but I never felt lost thanks to the teachers and the teaching assistant.

> Educational program: quite intense (you have to be prepared!) But really well built. I liked the rhythm: classes / exercises / projects. I had the impression that I had not learned so much in a long time! In April, I did not know anything about coding. Today, I feel able to develop myself a basic merchant website or to speak with a developer with the right words.

> Friendly atmosphere: each day you work with a different budy, there is a lot of support between students.

My plan for the future: My goal is to find a job in a company where I will be able to use the technical skills I have acquired, for example: working as a Product Owner.

After spending 9 weeks at Le Wagon Paris, I got a lot of skills and enjoyed every moment of the bootcamp. Teachers and the staff were always making sure that each student is moving forward and has a rich experience both on the human and professional level.

The pedagogical platforms provided by Le Wagon are exhaustive and easy to use. It helped me to push my own limits and gave me confidence in my future projects. Building a project from scratch in 2 weeks within a team made us apply our new skills in real-life situations and trained us for our future jobs in tech.

I was head of supply at Le Collectionist, a brand of luxury villas rentals and bespoke experiences, for 3 years, and decided I needed a change in my life. My desire was to learn again, and to be able to work closer to the tech team in the future jobs I would have. Aware of Le Wagon’s existence for a while, I decided to try and apply for it, and was convinced automatically once I step a foot in the offices at Le Villa Gaudelet in Paris.
The experience was amazing, as well in their learning format than in the community they created, and maintained so well. I didn’t see the 9 weeks passed, and it gave me the ego-boost and the motivation I needed to start something new. On the human level, Le Wagon is such a rich experience; it’s rare to be able to meet all those people with different backgrounds, motivated to give the best of themselves throughout the training.
On the teaching level, it’s based mostly on the practice of code (70% of the day), and enables you to also work on your personal skills (skills that will be great assets in any job). I entered Le Wagon wanting to be a product manager, and now I am actually a freelance in front web development (which I never thought would be possible before). I am learning everyday with my projects, and I am really happy I made this turn of carrier at this moment of my life.
As a bonus, I continue on being in Le Wagon’s community because I’m also Teaching Assistant in Paris - the best way to keep learning while continuing to spend crazy moments with the team and the students!

Before joining Le Wagon, I was working as a video producer and had purchased some online coding classes but due to lack of self descipline I never completed any. Therefore, it's safe to say that I went into the bootcamp with close to zero experiences. 

Campus: 
Apart from its unanimously sterling reviews online, I've always been quite fond of Japan so when Le Wagon Kyoto opened its second batch, it was a no brainer. There were eight people in my batch, 4 boys, 4 girls and I loved the classroom size. We would hang out during lunch and go to Izakaya after class. We would study together on the weekend and one of our classmates who was a Kyoto local even organized a couple sightseeing day trips around the area for us (a huge shout out to Aya! thank you!). Smaller classroom size also meant being able to spend more time with teachers and TAs asking questions. On top of everything, Kyoto was just a very nice city to live in. A short 20 mins walk to class everyday, nice weather, and plenty of things to do on the weekends. Loved it.

Curriculumn:
It was solid and was quite challenging for me at times. I had no experience in coding so everything I learned was new and since I'm a pretty slow learner, it would take me a couple tries to get the concepts down. Doing challenges could also be quite frustrating at times but when you finally figured it out it was SUPER rewarding and you'd be craving for more. One thing I did that helped me tremendously was watching next day's lecture the night before or the morning of and reviewing all the materials on the weekend. Here is also the perfect segway to my next point, teachers and TAs.

Teachers & TAs:
I'm not exaggerating when I say I enjoyed EVERY single teacher and TA we had for the entirety of the program. Apart from being extremely knowledgeable about the subject, they were all just wonderful humans in general. They were all extremely patient with us and would guide us through every question and made sure we understand every concept every step of the way. I would know becaue I was one of those students who needed extra attention and without fail I always had help. 

Conclusion: 
I started Le Wagon with zero knowledge in coding and am now confident enough to start creating my own projects and will also start looking for web dev jobs in Japan soon, something I wouldn't even dream of in the beginning of this year. Even after the bootcamp finished, Le Wagon had great support and resources for its alumni to keep them up to date on the latest job offerings, new courses, etc. As cliche as it might sound, Le Wagon isn't just a "bootcamp", you're introduced to a network of support the second you joined and you'll have it for the rest of your life. 

After finishing my masters in London in Computing and also running my small business on the side, I felt it was the time to learn the foundational coding skills needed to develop full products. As it will help me run my business easier and it will give me a more in-depth understanding of the best and most efficient process for software engineering.

The experience was amazing! Especially the project in the last two weeks where we were able to develop a fully functional prototype and see how software teams work. Le wagon team did a great job facilitating this program and I’m really thankful for this experience!