How and why I learned to code at le Wagon Coding bootcamp Berlin

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!