The need for new challenges and a different environment were the main reasons for the career switch.
I was working as a Concept to Consumer Manager in Reebok, taking care of Central East Europe market. It was amazing! I had a huge responsibility over my area, worked in an international environment, traveled a lot, had a company car… However after few years in the corporate world I really needed a change - change of career, environment and felt a strong need to learn something new. Maybe it was too comfortable?
Coding was always something I wanted to learn but there was never enough time, motivation, resources. So I quit my job, moved out of my city, gave 90% of my stuff away, packed what was left into a suitcase and moved to Berlin to check whether coding is the right choice. Le Wagon kept showing up at the top of google search results, bootcamp rankings, my “coding friends” also gave a green light. The choice was quite obvious.
So I quit my job, moved out of my city, gave 90% of my stuff away, packed what was left into a suitcase and moved to Berlin to check whether coding is the right choice.
I knew it will be intense. But out of that intensity I wanted to build up a possibility to become more independent in my career, ability to work in any country around the world, be more creative. And meet other people sharing the same passion for learning and creation!
What my experience at Le Wagon Berlin was like.
The biggest difficulty was that you can’t really have a life you used to have before the bootcamp during these 9 ridiculously intense weeks. First of all - it consumes a lot of time. Classes themselves and also reviewing the content (or catching up on sleep during the weekend). Other thing is that people outside of the bootcamp can’t really understand what you’re going through. The good things - excitement, growth, new passion, but also bad things - exhaustion, lack of time for other activities or some ugly coding bugs haunting you during the night… (other fellow classmates of the bootcamp will know what I mean).
I had almost 40 other people around me who knew exactly what I felt. They were going through the same thing and had the same ambitions.
On the other hand though I had almost 40 other people around me who knew exactly what I felt. They were going through the same thing and had the same ambitions. We were supporting each other every day to keep up the pace, especially thanks to the buddy system when you do pair programming.
Also the Project weeks when we worked in teams were amazing. We finally knew what we were (kind of) doing, wanted our product to be shiny and unique, supported each other with any problem we encountered. That was soooooo satisyfing.
Doing the bootcamp was one the the best decisions of my life.
For the last few months I’ve been constantly throwing myself into a deep water - take my current job as an example. I got hired as a Junior full-stack Developer shortly after Le Wagon. The thing is though, that Le Wagon teaches Rails - I don’t do Rails at work. I’m coding in Python (Django, Flask), Java Script (Backbone, bit of React native), everyday I’m learning something new in terms of system infrastructure, development - production flow and I can take in so much cause of how we were taught at Le Wagon. Intense, demanding program gave me the right speed of learning (and debugging..).
Ah, add to that showing up at Le Wagon from time to time as a teacher assistant (I miss Rails, that goes without saying!).
I’m learning something new in terms of system infrastructure, development - production flow and I can take in so much cause of how we were taught at Le Wagon.
The other aspect that’s super important is that the people I mentioned before are still there - and we became good friends. Invaluable side effect of being part of Le Wagon community :)
