Hi. Can you please introduce yourself?
Hi.I am Benjamin Aronov, I did Batch #161 at Le Wagon Tel Aviv.
I moved to Tel aviv 3 years ago from the USA. Today I work at a company called Vonage in Developer Relations.
Why did you choose Le Wagon?
I chose Le Wagon because I have a great childhood friend who did the bootcamp at Le Wagon in Belgium. She said the program was amazing and she landed a job in Paris just a few weeks after completing the program. At the time, I wanted to move to Tel Aviv and I was looking for coding bootcamps. I knew that getting a job in high tech in Israel was all about who you know, so I joined Le Wagon to get a network and in the meantime I fell in love with Ruby and all the people here.
What did you do before joining Le Wagon?
I worked in many different jobs and started a business, and to be honest I didn't really know what I was doing. I spent a year before moving to Tel Aviv trying to learn to code. I did a part time bootcamp in the US, it was good but I didn't progress fast enough and I didn't find any professional opportunities there. I knew I wanted to code and I knew that moving to Tel Aviv I would have more job opportunities in high tech and maybe become a programmer.
What are you up to now?
Now I work at a company called Vonage (communications company). I work in an industry called Developer Relations as a "Developer Community Manager". I basically help build a community of developers around our projects. Developer Relations is a really fun industry, combining coding with creative stuff, running events, creating content (written or video) and finding ways to help developers use our products to educate them which combines a lot of the same skills that I did as a teacher and community manager at Le Wagon.
How has what you learned in Le Wagon helped you in your current role?
I came to Le Wagon in order to find a job in Tel Aviv, it was a big risk but it worked out pretty well. At our demo day when I presented our group project, Rabea who was Le Wagon's (TLV) City Manager at the time, approached me and offered me a job as Le Wagon's first employee in Tel Aviv. I worked there for about 2 years, teaching at Le Wagon and organizing the bootcamp. The coding plus the educating (educator role) led me to where I am today. In the industry of Developer Relations I needed to learn how to code in order to nail down full stack. The opportunity of working at Le Wagon provided me with the right tools for my current role at Vonage.
Any word of advice for ?
The bootcamp is amazing, it's really hard work. The difference between people who are really successful and people who are frustrated afterwords is that the people who are successful understand right from the start that you can't do the minimum. You need to work hard every day, finishing the course doesn't guarantee anything. The day after your demo day is the first day that you are working, you have to continue working as hard as you did in the bootcamp.
