My name is Alexandra (or Lexie to those who know me), I am half Italian and half English and attended Batch #562 of Le Wagon in Dubai.
What were you doing before joining Le Wagon?
Before joining the bootcamp I was a Sales & Marketing Manager for an Entertainment company in Dubai and prior to that I worked in Sports & Events Management in London.
My career has always been in sales, where I would be marketing different products ranging from luxury high-end fashion, to entertainment solutions. In London I was working in Sports and events Management. We covered over 300 events a year so had to learn them very quickly! It was a constant learning curve to ensure we could deliver and satisfy our clients.
It was an exciting role, I had the opportunity to work with Wimbledon, the Royal Ascot, Henley Regatta and the Rugby World Cup to name a few of my favourite events. We were also partners of the Brit Awards.
Why did you decide to join the bootcamp?
I decided to join Le Wagon because I felt that the world is really moving towards being more technology driven. This became more evident as we all had to work from home due to COVID and put in place new technologies to make this successful.
Technology is disrupting so many different industries so I felt it would be important to be at the forefront of this.
As the sporting and events sectors across the world closed their doors due to the pandemic, I feel that now is a critical time for us to update skills and use this knowledge to move to a different industry or change careers.
How did you feel before starting the course?
Before starting the bootcamp, I was nervous because it’s tech-based. Previously my roles had celebrated my ability to network and be what you can call a “people-person” and relationship manager.
It was challenging to learn how to code but as a linguist, I wanted to take up the challenge of learning another language so to speak. My University degree was in Modern Foreign Languages, where I specialised in advanced Spanish, French and Italian. I hoped learning Ruby and Rails and JavaScript would therefore be something that with a lot of practice I could master too :)
What was your favourite part of it?
My favourite part was having the opportunity to meet people from other countries. One of the students came from Nigeria and had just turned 17, it was his first time on a flight and going abroad! Another student was 18 and just arrived from Germany for her Gap Year. There was also a Swiss girl, a Lebanese girl and a Romanian guy. It was very multicultural! I also found everyone was very friendly so we hosted weekly activities together and the teachers were all very supportive.
What was the most challenging part?
It was a very intense course. They said “3 weeks of the Bootcamp are equal to one year of university”. They give you a lot of information to take in at once. It’s tiring, at times overwhelming but you stick at it because it’s also very exciting at the same time!
What support does the bootcamp provide you?
Everyday we had a morning lecture and a live code session in the afternoon where the teacher went through all the points you learnt during the day. Throughout the whole day, the teacher was here to assist you if you needed any help. I also worked in a buddy system which was really nice as sometimes having an extra pair of eyes on why your code wasn't working was really helpful! Sometimes one of you got something, other times it’s your buddy that got it, together you moved faster rather than do things by yourself.
This was an amazing experience and really cemented to me what teamwork should be all about.
What are you doing now ?
Following the bootcamp, I joined Le Wagon’s online Career week organised by Le Wagon Germany.
I was able to join free workshops on how to build my resume, prepare for technical interviews, and learn how to plan my future career whilst also meeting alumni of Le Wagon community. We also had the opportunity to speak to frontend and backend developers as well as discover all the other tech roles in-between ranging from working in Data Science to being a Product manager. I feel that this really helped me understand the role I would like to pursue and what I need to do to achieve this.
I am also really excited to have been offered a position at BearStudio where I will be working in both Front-End and as a Business Developer. I am currently studying Javascript, React and Node.js in preparation for my 2 months of training in France this September.
BearStudio is a French run company that is composed of UI/UX designers as well as frontend, backend and full-stack developers who have over 10 years of experience in their field. From the conception of an idea to its production, we provide detailed mock-ups (defining a technical scope) and then put these solutions into action or can join an ongoing project and develop new features for you.
Any advice for someone that wishes to learn to code?
Go for it and be enthusiastic about it! You will have the support of the teachers and the students. Do the prep-work before joining, it will give you a great understanding of what’s to come.
You might find you prefer the Back-end or the Front-end more. Having the opportunity to do both sides of the code is a real eye opener and allows you to see whether you want to specialise in one or the other based on what you enjoy most.
