Le Wagon

Have you ever felt like you have good ideas, but you don’t really know how to make them real?

Let me tell you, I was having this exact same feeling for over one year.  As founders of a no-web start-up, my cofounder and I were feeling that to grow we needed to make our ideas accessible to everybody through web apps.  The option we had to do this was to hire tech guys or an agency to develop our ideas.  The problem was that as a start-up our budget was very restricted, so we were always getting to those typical questions:  What if the “magic” idea we have is not that good? What if the people we hire steal our idea?  What if they take more time than expected?  All these questions took us to the next question: why don’t we become the tech guys by learning to code? That was it!

I started the coding learning process through free online learning platforms.  But after a few months, I realized it was taking me nowhere.  I found two problems -  
The first was that I didn’t know what courses to choose.  What’s the first language I should learn? What should be the next one? How are they supposed to be linked?  
The second problem was that I was solving the challenges on their platform and if I was getting stuck I could just click the solve this exercise button and the platform was solving it for me.

Those two problems where the ones that brought me to applying for Le Wagon Lisbon.  

And let me summarize my experience there in few words: Le Wagon has been the best learning experience I have had in my life so far.  I truly believe it’s a game changer.  Everyday I was attending a two-hour lecture until 11 am.  After that I was solving challenges for five hours base on what I have had just learned, helped by teachers and assistant teachers. And, from 5pm to 7pm, I was discussing with the teaching staff and with my classmates on how I had solved the challenges and what could have been a better way.  The pace was perfect for me and after nine weeks I’m proud of my new knowledge in five different languages and in one framework.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, Le Wagon gives you solid bases to develop functional web apps and test them in the market in agile way and if the market doesn’t validate your idea you still have the knowledge to create another one and validate it again and so on.

If you feel like you have good ideas, my advice for you is that you learn to code.  Is the most effective way to test those ideas.  For me, Le Wagon was the best way to learn how to code, maybe for you is the same.

Great experience these 9 weeks at Le Wagon Lyon.

The teaching materials and monitoring tool are simply enormous.

My objective was to be autonomous in the web project design : to be able to concretize and materialize ideas of projects. And this is largely achieved with the bonus of tons of good practices to be super efficient and do a quality job.

Beyond learning the code, it is also teams of teachers and organization who invest themselves at your side and encourage all alumni and project leaders.

Le Wagon is not only these 9 weeks, it is also and especially a very strong community that accompanies you long after...

My name is George, and I’m a farmer looking to change how we buy our groceries. I work with my mum, on our 52 acre organic farm near Byron Bay, Australia (Check it out on instagram @farm.and.co ). However it wasn’t always as easy and idyllic as it sounds. For a long time, we were selling to wholesale markets, and struggling to make a profit.

Not long ago we changed our business model, and now sell all of our products direct to consumer, at our doorstep. In this model, we see an opportunity for customers to buy direct from the farmer whilst also providing producers with a fair wage.

I want to bring this model to more farmers and food makers. So I decided to go to Le Wagon.

At Le Wagon, I was lucky to meet some amazing people from all around the world. Some of which I am still working on projects with today. Each day we worked on projects and challenges, and 9 weeks later we each know how to code. The bootcamp was amazing, including patient, caring teachers, awesome facilities for all the students and yoga each week as promised.

It’s still hard to believe I can now code. I feel like a magician. Almost anything I want to create, I can. Currently I am perfecting my idea and will be launching on the 12th of May. You can view it at farmandco.com.au

Before joining Le Wagon, I had never had a relationship with computers. Any problem I'd have I'd go running to my boyfriend for help. I had been a teacher before joining and at university I'd studied Art History, nothing related to computers at all. I didn't think I'd have it in me to be good at web development. What was web development?

After meeting lots of self- taught coder digital nomads and hearing some good reviews of Le Wagon I decided it was now or never to try to change my career. Time to try something new, put my brain to work like it never had before and learn how to code. I was lucky that Lisbon had a Le Wagon school and even luckier that I was able to get the resident's scholarship which made it much more affordable.

I did Batch 122 which started in January, in the cold, wet winter months I thought were perfect for hibernating and coding away. And that's what I did, all day, everyday. 

At first the weeks were extremely hard for me, I'd never used my brain like this, I was tired, some days I did not understand how to solve the exercises, I thought I'd never be good enough...There were days I went home sad and frustrated, others however,  when I felt on top of the world excited about the new things I had learnt and what I was able to achieve. Understanding the challenges, working out the code for myself was both elating and inspirational!  As the weeks proceeded I realised that it wasn't sustainable worrying about understanding every single line of code. You have to trust in yourself and even if you have trouble doing so, trust in the system and the course and at some point you will  start to realise that even though things don't get easier, you can solve them as your confidence increases. At some point you think: I can do this! It's a wonderful feeling.

The challenges are never easy, from Day 1 you go through a baptism of fire but with the help of teachers and the other classmates you will feel very proud getting through it all. Le Wagon achieves this in 3 primary and essential ways:

1. The teachers and TA are an absolute dream-team. Extremely knowledgeable,  helpful, supportive with unrelenting patience and the desire to make you understand and more importantly to empower you how to achieve results for yourself. They also have an amazing energy and a great sense of humor making them so much fun to be around - Superteachers!

2. The buddy system - everyday you are set up with a new buddy, this helps immensely because some days you are being helped by a stronger student and other days you find yourself being the stronger one, mentoring your buddy. Then you feel you've really understood. The buddy system allows you to find your strengths and weaknesses and form strong bonds with your classmates.

3. The community and the atmosphere. Le Wagon is a family and you really feel that from Day 1. Our manager and community-manager Shannon and Maria were superb at making us feel at ease and involved at all times. We would have a weekly Friday dinner and many other activities which allowed us to bond with each other and the teachers. Beer pong, dancing, doughnuts and snacks, hugs, you name it, we had it!

Now that my Le Wagon experience has ended I am still very much tied to the community and I would be very sad if that were not so. These are bonds made for life and I know that if I ever have a programming problem I have tens of people I can turn to for help. I am hoping to find a job as a Junior Developer and really achieving my goal of changing my career and my life. 

Extremely highly recommended course and experience and a special shout out to the Lisbon school. The people involved have a big heart and it shows in their teaching, organizing, the ability to motivate people and make it fun!

Among all the bootcamps, I think this is one of the best way to learn about web development. Le wagon Lyon provides high level training with very talented teachers. I highly recommend Le Wagon to anyone looking for a career change or for technical skills to develop a business. It's definitely not easy, but you wont regret it!

One more important thing: Le wagon is a human experience too, you’ll have the opportunity to develop great friendships and networks. All the staff cares about the happiness of the students and are willing to create a supportive environment to help you achieve all the goals of the training.

Among all the bootcamps, I think this is one of the best way to learn about web development. Le wagon Lyon provides high level training with excellent teachers. I highly recommend Le Wagon to anyone looking for a career change or for technical skills to develop a business. It's definitely not easy, but you wont regret it!

One more important thing: Le wagon is a human experience too, you’ll have the opportunity to develop great friendships and networks. All the staff cares about the happiness of the students and are willing to create a supportive environment to help you achieve all the goals of the training.

Thanks again Matthieu, Kevin and Joseph!

I always wanted to backpack across Asia. Just over a year ago I left my job to hike the Himalayas and at the same time I started a travel blog to share my experience. Out of fun and curiosity, I tried to get into web design. I signed up to a few online coding courses to try to teach myself but I quickly realized that paradoxically you need to know how to code before you can learn to code! I ended up getting lost in the mass of information and wasting a lot of time.
I was determined to change things so I bit the bullet and paused my travels to enroll in the immersive coding bootcamp Le Wagon in Bali where I heard the climate was warm and the culture magical. I have not regretted it ever since.
To summarise the bootcamp experience in a few words is not easy but I can say for certain that it far exceeded my expectations. The amount you learn in such a short time is incredible.
The course fed us wave after wave of new concepts everyday but the teachers, the structure and the course platform make the learning process simple and effective. We were taught the back-end language of Ruby and its framework Rails, then covered 3 front-end languages, database management and a wealth of other material. We learnt through a combination of daily quizzes, exercises, live codes and even flashcards after class to reinforce the lectures and we did this endlessly over five weeks. By the sixth week, we were able to create an Airbnb clone. It would have been impossible for me to do this by myself, let alone in such a short time.
By the seventh week, the bootcamp builds up to the apex of idea pitching, project selection and definition, using the sprint methodology to build a working prototype from absolute scratch in 10 days. I am pleased to say that our team performed tremendously and the app looked amazing. We presented the project on Demo Day as you would to an investor but in our case in front of a packed room of tech enthusiasts living and working in Bali who asked me some tough queestions! There is no better training ground than this.
But because we all know we can never fully master the infinite world of web design let alone in two months, the point of difference with other bootcamps and the power of Le Wagon is exactly this – 1. it gives you the ability to transform your ideas into a working web app that is ready to be shown to the world by the end of the bootcamp, 2. you will feel you are able to code independently, solve your own problems and 3. be ready to enter the tech world and embark on new undertakings. Right now, I feel nothing will stand in my way of coding and learning more coding which is exactly what I came to Bali for.
Less than a month since I finished the bootcamp, I am working on the project I built at Le Wagon with the hope to launch it as a startup soon. At the same time, I'm studying React with no major problem. I have also already been contacted for some freelance contracts.
To put it in a nutshell, at the age of 29, Le Wagon gave me the ability to start a new career. I could not have asked for anything better. The motto of Le Wagon is "Change your life: learn to code", and I guarantee you that it could not have been more appropriate. If you want to learn coding, Le Wagon is the best investment you could make!
And did I forget to say if you take the course in Bali, you will love your time spent mixing coding with an early-morning surf or a sundowner beer on the beach, all for a fraction of the price elsewhere. That is why I am calling Bali home for a little while longer.

I've always been an entrepreneur and my own boss since leaving university 10 years. I used to run a fast food business an grew frustrated with the scalability of it. So I tried some online coding and realised the power of it. Fast forward 9 months, the week I left Le Wagon I started a web agency with a friend from the course and we got out first customers that week. 

Le Wagon was genuinely one of the best things I've ever done. I am now my own boss again. Apart from the odd meeting, I can work anywhere I want, whenever I want, as long we deliver for our customers, which we are doing. 

Le Wagon is not just for entrepreneurs. The speed at which my class mates landed developer jobs is faster than any other industry I know. The level this 9 week course can get you to is unimaginable until you actually do it. All my classmates are happily employed either full time or freelance and loving their new lives. 

Software is eating the world. Don't get left behind. 

I have been working as a Digital Project Manager/Interactive Producer for the past 12 plus years at quite a few interactive Digital Agencies in Southern California.  Until 3 years ago, I quit a solid full time job of 6 years because I was simply burnt out.  Late nights, weekend work, and no real social life… I had to do something. When I quit my job, I really did not have a plan, but knew I wanted to have my own business, travel more, and to be in control of my time.  

After traveling a bit, I decided to start a small interactive agency.  Things picked up quick and a big issue I was facing was finding reliable talent.  I decided to learn more about the current state of the web development world to enhance my understanding and become a better Digital Project Manager.  I needed to get up to date with front end development(started in digital as a web developer years ago) and have always been intimidated by the backend.

I came across Le Wagon after going through a few dev bootcamp review sites. After checking out some of the Youtube videos and all the locations around the world, I knew I had to go. But which one?

Next thing you know I am in Barcelona. First time in Spain and learning full stack development at Le Wagon. The curriculum covers everything you need to know to get started with front and backend development. Each day you are challenged and building up to create your very own web application.  Of course you are not building it alone, you and your comrades you have been training with through the course are coming together daily to make it happen. And we made it happen!  

Teachers are awesome, course content is well thought out and presented well, and the support is exceptional. It was a good choice and think that taking the course was long overdue.  I wish I would have signed up sooner. The digital world is moving fast, and if you want to stay current you have to be sure you are around the right people and resources.  Le Wagon has been that place for me and has provided the knowledge upgrade I needed to take my skill set to the next level. The skills I have attained through Le Wagon have assisted in enhancing processes in my business as well as locating and hiring more reliable talent.  I also have a newfound love for backend coding.  

Thank you Le Wagon!

Before Le Wagon i was working in door to door sales, which is not really a career. So I decided i needed a career change. After a bit of research I found Le Wagon and was extremely interested in learning how to code. It was the best and most life changing decision I have made in my life so far. The people working at Le Wagon are amazing and so much fun to learn and work with. I have not stopped recommending it to people since I left. Just 2 weeks after finishing I was able to land an amazing job and I cannot thank them enough.

This is the training you have to do if you want to change your day to day and start a tech. way of working ! Working for 10 years as an Industrial Engineer, I moved to Bordeaux and wanted to make a real turn in my career.  Wagon allows me to do so, thanks to the quality of the trainings, the team of course and the tech culture.  In 9 weeks, you will learn how to build a website from the really beginning to the online version, knowing all the steps to do it in the best way, learning Ruby, Javascript, Html, Css, Ruby on Rails. I have just finished my training and have so many projets in my head now possible.

Doing Le wagon Bootcamp and learning how to code during 9weeks was incredible ! 

I didn't know anything about coding but the Bootcamp program is so well thought and built that you can't fail. 

It has been very very intense but so efficient! I have met great people, joined a great and active network and gained new skills : It opened new perspectives . 

In addition the Lille team is sooooo great: present, attentive, very competent. They are quality teachers!

I sincerely advise anyone who is interested by websites to do it. 

I recently completed Le Wagon Amsterdam batch #126. It was, in short, the best learning experience of my life.

Throughout and after high school, which I graduated the summer just before the bootcamp, I completed other coding courses before, but none of them had the same impact on me or taught me as much as Le Wagon. Even with very high expectations for the programme, they managed to exceed each and every one. The curriculum and structure side of the programme is amazing. The teachers and teacher assistants do a great job at explaining every concept just enough so you really understand what you’re doing. Additionally, they teach other soft and hard skills a developer needs to succeed in the industry, such as version control and collaboration with other developers.

What surprised and pleased me the most was the sense of community that is created since day one, and persists even after the bootcamp is over. The buddy system is a great way to learn to code with other developers, get to know the other bootcamp participants and even make new friends.

All in all, I would absolutely recommend LeWagon to anyone, regardless of previous experience with code.

Just before writing this review, I was programming away on an application for a freelance client; feeling the adrenaline of jumping back and forth between back and front-end as I freed the code of bugs. I feel in-control, powerful, and like I can accomplish anything if I really set my mind to it. A few months ago, this would not have been possible.

Before Le Wagon Shanghai, I always felt pretty stuck. I had that dreaded feeling of waking up every morning, anxious and complacent about going to work; doing everything for the paycheck. I always felt like my job controlled me and I was running on autopilot, doing what I needed to get done to go home and let life begin everyday.

In comes Le Wagon. What a crazy, incredible ride. I don’t even know where to begin.

• The course material was engaging and challenging. The lectures and instruction were typically short and sweet; giving us the fundamentals to go on with the day and code until we couldn’t code anymore.
• The instructors were inspiring and reminded me of how much I love to learn; especially as a more focused adult. I consider them to be lifelong friends and mentors. Not having strong role models previously, I gained several while on this camp.
• My peers may have been the best part about it. We were all going through the same crazy coursework together. I’ve come out of the course with freelance buddies, business partners and close friends.

I think the greatest takeaways I had from Le Wagon was that it gave me the skills and the confidence to get out there and start obtaining some freelance jobs to gain more experience. Furthermore, when I go to start my own business in the future, I will feel technically ready to make it happen. Finally, I love that I have an invigorated drive to learn again, and I no longer have the limiting beliefs that have stopped me from reaching my full potential in the past.

One thing to keep in mind is that you have to work your ass off to get the most out of the experience. This includes after the experience. Don’t let your skills go to waste after the camp by not putting them into action in one way or another.

Either way, you will enjoy it, you won’t have regrets. Make the investment, because it is so worth it.

My name is François, I took the batch#64 in São Paulo, Brazil. I used to work in investment banking in France and I wanted to take advantage of a life transition where I decided to live in Brazil to learn new skills. I was attracted by the tech world and wanted to get to know web-development with the idea to develop my own project or join a start-up (I joined a peer-to-peer lending platform in Brazil few months after Le Wagon). Getting out of Le Wagon you can easily get a role as junior developer, however it is also a strong asset if you are looking for product manager role or any business role in a tech company.

The key barriers to entry to web-development is the fact that a web application mixes a lot of pieces that you have to put together to have it up and running: you need a backend language (Ruby @ Le Wagon), HTML & CSS to build your frontend, javascript to make it bite reactive, a data-base, etc… which makes it extremely hard to learn on your own. Le Wagon pedagogy is great and quickly guides you step by step through the basics of web-development to build strong foundations (no blind application of something you would be told to do, you actually know what you are doing !).

The 2 last weeks are dedicated to building an application, it is amazing what you can achieve in 2 weeks when you had no previous knowledge few weeks earlier! My project was an application that helps friends getting together calculating the best neighborhood to hangout (based on where people will leave and taking commuting time into account) and generating a selection of bars and restaurants so that the group can democratically decides where it will hangout, ain’t that cool  ?

I quit my job as COO of a small software company at the age of 53 because it was becoming more of a sales position and that initiated me to make a career change and go all in on my dream of becoming a web developer. Three weeks later I was in Barcelona on a very intense web developer boot-camp to learn the full stack based on Ruby on Rails.

I had no prior experience to coding in any language so for me basically everything was new which meant focusing and working long hours every day - even outside of the 9-10 hour days on the boot-camp - in order to 'get' as much as possible. The instructors were great and especially their patience was admirable when we asked what must have been the same questions over and over.

Le Wagon lead us through everything from the database to the front-end step by step and through the entire process we were working hands on with bigger and bigger projects. We finished the camp in teams of 3 or 4 where we in two intense weeks built a fully functional and relatively complex web application. Our projects were constantly pushed through social media and getting attention from potential future employers which combined with all the extra events like job fairs and networking arranged by Le Wagon was a great inspiration and opportunity for us as new developers.

This camp far exceeded my expectations and at the time of writing this just a few days after finishing in Barcelona I already have two job offers in Denmark and Germany. I'm definitely going all in on this exciting field where the market is screaming for qualified people - I hope to be able to combine my future job with my interest in and knowledge of the Blockchain but that only time will tell...

Before joining Le Wagon, I was working at Google as an Account Manager in Digital Marketing for Google’s largest automotive and mobility clients. 

I did not have any prior knowledge of coding but noticed that more and more of my discussions with partners were about their web applications. This increased a lot with the emergence of new mobility start-ups.

The business need together with a personality of always wanting to learn new skills made me very excited about applying to Le Wagon. The alumni reviews speak for themselves and even before going I was sure I had made the right choice. 

The people I met there and the skills I learned however completely exceeded my expectations. After going to Business School and learning for the sake of passing exams it felt extremely refreshing learning a skill for life. The teachers did an amazing job guiding the students along their line of thinking instead of imposing one single way to solve the many challenges. 

The absolute highlight were the three last weeks in which we built two MVPs. Before the bootcamp I would never have thought it was possible to build a working and fully designed MVP in only two weeks. 

Back in my job I am looking forward to apply not only the technical expertise I learnt but also use some of the Agile and Scrum techniques we learnt for my daily business.

This was an absolutely amazing experience and I would recommend it to anybody in doubt.

After working in the banking industry and in IT banking industry, i was tired of the slowness and the antiqueness of the processes and way of working there.

I was also frustrated about not to be technical enough to fully understand the IT processes.

 

That’s why, in the first hand I decided to learn by myself coding with the help of internet resources. But after a while, I was kind of blocked in my learning progress.

At this time, when surfing on the web, I found Le wagon bootcamp.

 

The quality of the website, the transparency about the program, the good reviews and the alumni careers convinced me and long story short I enrolled for it ( and I can tell you, i do not regret it J).

https://www.lewagon.com/

 

The bootcamp was far beyond my expectations.

The pedagogy, the learning pace, the resources are extremely well designed and you feel that you are immediately able to use it IRL.

The second major key point is the people. Teachers, TAs, Drivers, are very nice, competent and always willing to help you, for the bootcamp itself but also for your personal project(s). They are very encouraging and they make you grow by putting you in the right direction, with the correct mindset.

Last but not least Le wagon provide you with a huge active tech community.

Le wagon Slack will be your best friend (you can go home facebook J) with tons a job offers, resources, tutorials, tech news…

 And of course, a help section if you are struggling with an issue, the 2K + members are here to help you out.

 

I was part of wagon Batch #127 in Bordeaux (jan-march 2018). I’m now beginning my career as a freelance web developer and digital nomad, as will be living in the Caribbean.

After only a couple of weeks after le wagon I have projects in the pipe, a tons of stuff to read, to learn, to do and the brain full of ideas in order to contribute to open source community and projects.

La Wagon will open you the door of the gigantic tech universe.

I have a brand new world to explore (bye bye boring office work and hours)…and coding under the sun with the feet on the sand…what else? J

To conclude, a tech enthusiastic, tech curious who is always willing to learn & grow and who is dreaming to be part of the tech world, enroll, you’ll not regret it!

It's definitely not easy (as there is a lot to learn in 9 weeks), but it’s totally worth it without any doubt.

Change your life: learn to code with Le Wagon…and see you soon on Slack J