Making the transition into tech: Meet 10 of our alumni who have made it!

Hi, I'm Maarten and I am the Partnerships & Careers Manager at Le Wagon in Germany. I graduated from the Le Wagon Web Development Bootcamp back in April 2019 and I fell in love with the team and the Le Wagon culture ❤️. I was determined to come back to Berlin and start working for Le Wagon, so in July 2020, I started working as Partnerships & Careers Manager . My main focus is to get the alumni ready for the job market and support them on their journey to getting a job.

Let’s take a look at some of our graduates who have landed a job after the bootcamp as developers, freelancers, product managers or even started their own company! 

Sadie, Backend developer for Adjust (Batch #288, Berlin)

Before learning to code I was getting my masters in Comparative Literature and teaching English in France.
I now work as a backend developer for Adjust - an advertising analytics firm. I work in both Ruby and Elixir, and have also dabbled in different Javascript frameworks at my job. I’ve also taught myself some Python frameworks, which I use for freelancing projects on the side of my job. I’m hoping to dive more into Data Science in the future!
It took me about 3 months of steady interviews, coding challenges, emails and calls - keeping it all super organized with a Trello board to track my progress . I went through about 5 rounds of interviews with my current company before securing the job. After studying literature and the arts for most of my life, I wanted to re-engage the logical, math-oriented part of my brain . I also wanted job and salary security, and academia was not putting me on that path.

Niklas, Product Manager at heycar  Batch #288, Berlin)

My name is Niklas & I was a participant of the batch 288 in Berlin. Basically I just finished university , finishing my  bachelor degree & had some work experience in a mixed role (Product Management/Business Development & Business intelligence) in a startup here in Berlin.

At the moment I am working at heycar as a Product Manager, first starting to build a pilot for online-sales &  direct-to-consumer sales in the area of car leasing together with Volkswagen Financial Services. Now I will take over the classifieds business from heycar to challenge the market against mobile & autoscout.

For me personally was the perfect decision to join Le Wagon, given the technical background I was missing to application profile as a Product Manager. I had already two weeks after the bootcamp different opportunities where I could sign a contract & I decided to join heycar.

Verena, Software Development Trainee at Babbel (Batch #370, Berlin).

I have 2,5 years experience in Online Marketing and studied Media Management (Tech+Design+Economics). Right before the bootcamp I’ve done a social ecological gap year working for an NGO which supports women in labour work .
Two months after the bootcamp I started as a Software Engineer Trainee at Babbel. In the first 3 months, I was developing two language learning games together with 6 other Trainees. Recently I’ve joined the Babbel B2B Team for another 3 months. I’ve continued developing in RoR and added JS, Node and React to my tech-stack. 

Right after the bootcamp I got the chance to continue as TA. I coded a lot, worked on my own projects and did quite a few coding challenges . I was quite lucky to get two job offers for full-time jobs right after the bootcamp.

Joost, Product Owner at Vantik (Batch #223, Berlin)

After completing my Master in Digital Business in Madrid, I worked as a strategy consultant in Zurich. Through my close contact with software developers I was encouraged to build up more technical understanding. 

During my time at Le Wagon I came into contact with a VC from Cologne. They were looking for a product owner for one of their start-ups. Unfortunately the company went bankrupt soon after, but I switched to another startup from the same investor. 
Vantik is a FinTech solution that is designed to make saving for retirement easier. Here I joined as a product owner and was jointly responsible for two products. One is to improve and expand the existing product (ETF savings plan, Roundup system) and the other is to launch a credit card with a cashback programme in 2021.

In my case I was lucky because I had the job before the boot camp ended. But I can say with certainty that knowing how to program gives you a strong advantage on the job market. It is not important how good you are at programming, a pure understanding of complex or less complex tasks is already a big advantage.

Karen, Backend Developer at Babbel (Batch #124, Berlin)

I am originally from Spain, where I graduated in social work. Shortly after finishing my degree, I moved to France with the idea to learn french and I ended up getting a job at Booking.com. In 2014, I was moved to Berlin as the company was opening a new office . I worked there as a senior supervisor in customer service before learning to code at Le Wagon Berlin. 

I am now working as a backend developer for the Payment team at Babbel . We take care of connecting our application with different payment providers, add new currencies and payment methods to the website, create invoices, give or revoke access to the product for our users, build and maintain the tools our customer service team uses, deal with requests from marketing and country managers in terms of pricing and much more. 

Right after I finished the bootcamp there was a job fair in Berlin. Le Wagon gave us discount tickets and there I met with one of the directors of Engineering from Babbel ‍ who told me about the job opening, a few weeks after the job opened, I applied and I got hired!

Mirsolav, IT consultant at Accenture (Batch #322, Berlin)

I started working as an online marketing manager in a marketing agency, mainly focusing on optimization of websites in terms of meeting search engine requirements and design best practices. Later this role evolved into a mixture of marketing and business development functions, in which my responsibilities expanded by building partnerships and collaborations within the IT sector as well as taking over part of the pitches for potential clients.

At the moment I am working as an IT consultant at Accenture, supporting clients in the process of developing web applications and expanding their feature sets using agile methodologies and techniques .

During the Career Week at the end of the bootcamp, I attended a talk, where Accenture held an intriguing presentation regarding various career opportunities. I saw this as a great possibility to apply the gained knowledge so far and my previous experience with working with clients. After a few days I sent out my application and it didn’t take long to start the process.

Svitlana, Software Engineer at Mercedes Benz.io (Batch #233)

I studied Finance a few years ago but shortly after finishing my studies moved to Germany. Here I found it very difficult to get a job without any experience and good German skills. Then I accidentally found Le Wagon and decided to start over .
I am working as a Software Engineer at Mercedes-Benz.io. I am part of the Backend team for Bertha, the fuel app from Mercedes-Benz .

It took me around 6 months to find a job. I applied to more than 30 companies, got 3 interviews and one offer. Although I applied to many companies on my own, the offer I received was from a company I've met during the Le Wagon Career Week .

What helped me a lot during this time was working as TA and learning and building projects on my own. Firstly, because there is so much more to learn and explore. Secondly, most companies will be interested if you can work independently and organize your learning yourself, as this skill will help to progress in the new job.

Joao, Fullstack Engineer at Adjust (Batch #111, Berlin)

I started learning to code while I was in my last job before Le Wagon. I was working as a Country Manager for an app builder platform and was doing a lot of marketing automation tasks, that’s what got me interested in programming as I wanted to go further than the tools I had at hand offered but had not enough skills to do so.

Today I work as a Frontend Developer in the inbound web team at Adjust, building almost every interface users see before getting into the core product. I am currently changing jobs and will be starting as Fullstack Engineer at GetYourGuide .

After Le Wagon, I knew I wanted to invest more time on Frontend development as it had a bigger overlap with Design and other disciplines I enjoyed, so I filtered my search this way. Another key aspect of landing my first developer job was trying to figure out how my past experiences would benefit the team/role I’d take, that helped me pitch my profile and to compensate for the fairly new dev skills I had just acquired.

Allan, Founder of Liist (Batch #244, Berlin)

Before joining Le Wagon, I was the Creative Director at Instagram in NYC . I moved to Berlin to join Le Wagon’s bootcamp. 

After the bootcamp, I founded Liist with a couple of other bootcamp grduates. This is changing the way people organize and share their favorite destinations . Liist auto-magically converts your screenshots and DMs from Instagram to a personal map using machine learning, turning the no-go screenshot folder on your phone into a go-to map of all the places you intended to save for later. It also has an algorithm that lets folks import their saved locations from Google Maps and organize them neatly into ‘Hit Lists’ they can share with friends.

Riccardo, Founder of Sparknews (Batch #389 , Munich)

I have always been working within the start-up ecosystem, and had several working experiences in it. 

My last strong professional experience has been at FlixBus , the Munich unicorn for long distance transportation – mostly known for their green busses. I joined FlixBus when the company was still relatively small, and I literally saw the company grow to the current market leader. I decided to join Le Wagon because I have always been passionate about tech and programming.

Now that I finished Le Wagon, I want to dive deeper within the startup ecosystem, with the focus being in Munich. For now, I planned to apply the knowledge I gained by creating an MVP of two personal projects - one of which I developed at Le Wagon and I pitched during the final project demo. 

Firstly, the product we created at Le Wagon is called SparkNews ✨- a platform which allows you to feel the pulse of the stock market. If you invest in the stock market occasionally, this is the right platform for you.  Secondly, I am working on the launch of ÒCIO eyewear - an innovative eco-digital sunglass brand for people just like Le Wagonians. It will be soon launched through a crowdfunding campaign, and just for a short time it will be possible to pre-order a pair of glasses at exceptional prices.