Neil Cairns
1/5
LeWagon London - How to waste thousands of pounds and be left with no job and poor mental health! ️? 1 year on.
I had to give 1 star as you’re not allowed to leave 0 stars. Shame.
Having actually completed the full time Web Dev course at Le Wagon London in March of 2023 (Jan-March), I can tell you for a fact that it’s not all it might appear from the outside and certainly a number of things are not right.
Let’s start with the implications and stats - the reason I did this bootcamp was to aid in a career change. They strongly imply that once you’ve done the bootcamp there’s thousands of tech jobs and that you will be highly employable, unfortunately this is just not the case for the vast majority of people who will leave a Le Wagon bootcamp. They use a Stat of 93% employment rate, which as of today seems to have dropped to 90%, yet still I would be amazed if the inverse of this figure was true and that even 10% of students got a tech job because of the bootcamp.
I am awaiting a request about what data they use to come up with these stats.
If these stats were true, surely most of the people I did the bootcamp would be employed. I would say of the people I studied with, less than 10% of them have a job that isn’t either with Le Wagon or that have nothing to do with competing a coding bootcamp!
The content of what is taught and how it’s taught is not good, from focusing on Ruby/Rails, something that’s hardly at the forefront of the tech world in 2023 or at the top of an employers wish list. Then there is the inexperienced staff who have little or no teaching experience and the first time they’ve done anything like this is when they’re offered a job by Le Wagon straight from the bootcamp as what they call a TA (teaching assistant). This is how they’re able to keep their costs down, and how the whole thing is able to keep going, one cohort at a time.
The lack of attention to any front end design coding or real emphasis on anything that wasn’t Ruby was astonishing. You question this as you’re there, as do other students and you’re all told the same, that it will all come together in the final week - you’re suspicious but tell yourself they’re a big company, it will be ok…. It won’t. Trust your gut!
The ‘career week’ was like the icing on top of a really stale cake, and just an absolute farce. Not only did the 3 employers who were invited not have any jobs to offer, and were not actually recruiting, two of them didn’t seem to know why they were there. When their talks about the tech industry finished, we were instructed to talk to them, like some oddball fans, it was almost like we all gathered round to see what other pearls of wisdom they would offer. They didn’t.
All in all, 9 weeks later and not much wiser, I would say they had well and truly done a number on me.
12 months later, I am a still not in a tech role, and my physical and mental health has suffered considerably, something which is particularly saddening, given that Le Wagon continues to pedal their bootcamps to anyone who is silly enough to believe their nonsense. Despite trying to get some of my money back, they’ve refused to engage in any appropriate or professional way, and instead have said that I’m to blame!
They are now refusing to engage with me and are ignoring my emails, citing that they’ve blocked me… its like dealing with children, and would be funny if it wasn’t for the thousands of pounds of money they’ve had. It’s not funny. It’s extremely frustrating and continuing to damage my health, but I refuse to be threatened by them.
