Is Le Wagon Worth It? How the Tech Bootcamp Helps You Land a Job in Tech

A tech bootcamp is an intensive program where people can learn in-demand skills in various fields including web development, data science, design, or cybersecurity in a short amount of time. For many career switchers, bootcamps are a more affordable and quicker alternative to a computer science degree. 

But are tech bootcamps enough to land you a job in the field?

The good news is that some coding bootcamps do publish their placement statistics, which reflect the bootcamp’s ability to produce job-ready graduates. When picking the right coding bootcamp, choosing one with high job placement rates is of primary importance. Among these bootcamps is Le Wagon.

In this article, we highlight the success of Le Wagon, a tech school offering full-time (9 weeks) and part-time (24 weeks, studying some weekday evenings and Saturdays) tech bootcamps in Web Development and Data Science in 44 campuses around the world, including Paris, London, Berlin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Shanghai, São Paulo, Singapore, Bali and more. 

Le Wagon’s Job Outcomes Review

Le Wagon conducts a Jobs Report where they survey the outcomes of their students from their most recent cohorts. Using these numbers, we can get a more complete understanding of what the average Le Wagon student achieves after graduating from the bootcamp.

According to Le Wagon’s outcomes report, 93 percent of respondents who graduated from their European campuses found employment at an average time-to-hire window of 34 days and a median salary of €38,000 (approx. $44,000).

Below are key points from Le Wagon’s 2021 Jobs Report for the French campuses:

• Of the job-seeking graduate respondents, 90 percent were successful in landing a job within 180 days, with the median time to employment being 32 days.
• Thirty-six percent of total respondents found a new job after graduation, with a median salary of $46,385.

Below are key points from Le Wagon’s 2021 Jobs Report for the German campuses:

• Of the job-seeking graduate respondents, 90 percent were successful in landing a job within 180 days, with the median time to employment being 37 days.
• Forty-eight percent of total respondents found a new job after graduation, with a median salary of $51,000.

Salaried Job Titles

Of these job-seeking graduates who landed new salaried jobs after the Le Wagon bootcamp, the following job titles were most common amongst graduates: 

• Full-Stack Web Developer
• Backend Developer
• Front End Developer
• Data Scientist
• Product Manager
• Data Analyst
• UX/UI Designer
• Product Owner

Outcomes for Freelancers and Entrepreneurs

Since Le Wagon is a bootcamp that encourages creativity and entrepreneurship, some graduates choose to become freelancers or start their own companies. In fact, 178 startups have been created by Le Wagon alumni to date, and 84 of them have already raised approximately $438 million.

Eleven percent of students from Le Wagon’s French campuses became freelancers, and seven percent started their own companies. Of that number, the average daily salary for freelance graduates of Le Wagon is $290 per day.

Around 10 percent of students from Le Wagon’s German campuses became freelancers, and three percent started their own companies. The average daily salary for those graduates is $237 per day.

Le Wagon 2021 Jobs Report is available on their website. There is also an option to request a specific Student Jobs Report for any of 44 cities with Le Wagon campuses. 

How Le Wagon Makes Career Success Possible

We interviewed Richard O’Grady, Head of Outcomes at Le Wagon, as well as four Le Wagon alumni, Frederike Soyka, Sorina Duca, Oscar Lefebvre, Paul Chabbert, to understand how Le Wagon produces these results.

Le Wagon Bootcamp Program Design

Le Wagon coding bootcamp programs are designed to teach the most in-demand skills and a hands-on curriculum to build digital projects and solve problems. Besides learning the skill set, Le Wagon students learn to communicate with a team and always keep a critical eye on their work. 

Sorina Duca, an alumnus of Le Wagon part-time Web Development Bootcamp in Berlin, considers such course design as the main attraction of her bootcamp experience: “You build up your skills, and then you are put in a real-life situation and do your own design,” says Sorina. 

Sorina believes that writing user stories on different topics like “How to be a product owner” and pitching your ideas to peers during the immersive coding bootcamp creates a unique working environment that prepares students for future teamwork in IT companies. 

Career Weeks at Le Wagon

After completing their technical training, Le Wagon graduates are encouraged to participate in Career Week, which runs for two weeks for the part-time program and one week for the full-time program.  

Day 1 of the Career Week exposes students to the careers they can pursue after the bootcamp. “We invite some past alumni who have landed jobs in different career paths to come in to speak to students to help them make the decision, ” says Richard O’Grady, Head of Outcomes at Le Wagon.  

After that, students spend the rest of the Career Week getting help with the most important prerequisites for the job search: CV, LinkedIn, Github, cover letters, a project portfolio, interview tips, and technical challenges. Students also come up with a game plan for how to structure their time and a learning path to upskill themselves for the future.

Post-Grad Career Support

Beyond the Career Week, Le Wagon continues to support its alumni through 1:1 sessions, during which all job-seeking alumni review what they learned during Career Week with Le Wagon Careers Advisors or City Managers. 

Le Wagon tracks the progress of its alumni over the next six months after graduation. Frederike Soyka, an alumnus of Le Wagon’s Full-time Web Development Bootcamp in Berlin, mentions that going over her CV with a Le Wagon Career Advisor helped her get her first tech job: “I wanted to know how to change my CV to focus on technical topics, and that was very helpful.”

Teaching Assistant Opportunity

Students get the chance to become teaching assistants at Le Wagon after graduation. Two of four interviewed Le Wagon alumni, Frederike Soyka and Paul Chabbert, took advantage of this opportunity. 

“That was a great decision because I could dive deeper into the topics in the course. What I learned with coding is that you know you really understand it when you can explain what you’re doing to someone else. The teaching assistant position was great for that. I had time to do additional learning in programming languages,” says Frederike. 

Paul, who is an alumnus of Le Wagon’s full-time Data Science Bootcamp in Paris, also recommends graduates take advantage of the teaching assistant opportunities at Le Wagon: “My advice is to just go for it. It’s an awesome experience. You will learn a lot. You will probably learn more because you consolidate everything. When you need to explain something to somebody, you need to understand it very well first.”

Le Wagon Alumni and Hiring Partners Community

Le Wagon’s community is a prime source for job hunting opportunities for alumni. Le Wagon shares job opportunities from their hiring partners in their internal Slack channel, which comprises over 13,000 alumni and teachers from around the world. 

Students leverage the Slack workspace to improve what they learned during the bootcamp, develop new skills, network, find co-founders, and get advice for freelancing or finding a job in tech.

There’s a jobs channel, where successful alumni can post job openings from their companies. On average, there are between five to 10 jobs posted per day from Le Wagon alumni around the world. Richard, Head of Outcomes at Le Wagon, says Le Wagon alumni startups have raised over €400 million (approx. $460 million) globally, often founding companies with other alumni and taking their final projects to a user-ready MVP.

Oscar Lefebvre, an alumnus of Le Wagon full-time Data Science Bootcamp in Paris, said that even though he wasn’t seeking a job himself, he hired several Le Wagon alumni for his clients’ companies.

There are also city-specific Slack channels where the Le Wagon team posts relevant jobs from their hiring partners and the wider market. Le Wagon has more than 850 hiring partners at top tech companies, including leading tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, PayPal, and Uber. Students also get the chance to meet with these partners through Le Wagon’s job fairs, networking events, and coaching sessions. 

A Curriculum Focused on In-Demand Skills

Sorina mentions that, unlike other bootcamps that teach mainly JavaScript, Le Wagon’s Web Development Bootcamp program focuses on Ruby and Ruby on Rails. Sorina believes this skillset gave her an advantage over competitors and made her job-hunting process easier. 

“It’s a pretty well-paid market because there are not so many people who want to work with or know Ruby, but there are a lot of companies that started with Ruby and continue with it, ” says Sorina. She got her first tech job as a junior Ruby developer just one month after graduating from Le Wagon. 

Paul shares that Le Wagon became the tech school of his choice because “it was the only, or at least the first one to offer, the first Data Science Bootcamp.” This program gave him the chance to learn Python and advanced Machine Learning to boost his tech career. 

Build Your Tech Career with Le Wagon 

Learning the necessary tech skills is just one of the steps to building a career in tech. Another is equipping yourself with the critical job skills to get noticed by employers and land the job you want. Le Wagon makes both possible by providing rigorous tech training and comprehensive job search support.

With a 93 percent employment rate, 34 days on average to find employment, and a huge community of alumni and hiring partners, Le Wagon is an attractive option for those seeking to land their first tech job. 

Are you eager to switch your career and land your first tech job, like Frederike and Sorina? Do you want to upskill in data science, just like Oscar and Paul? Be part of Le Wagon’s upcoming cohort today.