Planning to start your life in a new country can be overwhelming and quite challenging: Housing, job, insurance, language, culture shocks, learning new skills… The list of things to deal with is endless.
Le Wagon understands this and so decided to start a new programme called the Speak & Code Academy that helps you to kick off your tech career while learning the German language - in just six months.
Recent graduate Thaís is one person who has turned around their life with a course from Le Wagon. She moved from Rio de Janeiro to Munich as her partner had found a job there. After a year of settling in, she decided to switch careers and turn to Le Wagon for help. She just graduated from one of Le Wagon's Web Debelopment bootcamps, yet her experience is very much relatable to anyone who is looking for a new beginning in Germany with the Speak & Code programme. Read on as she shares her experiences below!
One cool thing about Le Wagon's bootcamps such as Speak & Code is that a technical degree or background is not needed to join the programme. “I studied Communications in college with a focus on Publishing,” Thaís tells us. “I worked in that field for eight years, then I became a full-time freelance translator and spent five years translating video games and books. I never thought I had the right type of mind for pursuing a career in STEM.”
To her, the abstract aspects of coding were one of the biggest challenges she faced during the programme. “Training a creative brain to think logically isn’t always easy. I was definitely out of my comfort zone, and the feeling of not knowing got frustrating at times. Persisting and trusting the process was sometimes just as hard as assimilating the new concepts.”
Beginnings are hard, but Thaís fought through the obstacles. Her personal challenge turned into her personal highlight later on: “The first time I felt that the concepts were finally starting to make sense to me was when I really understood not only what I was doing with the challenges but also why I was doing what I was doing. It was a moment that made me feel that I could actually, really accomplish interesting things as a programmer, even if this field is so different from my original background. I felt that it was just a matter of time and effort on my part.“
To Thaís, the team at Le Wagon as well as the academy’s teaching concept were key factors to her success in the programme: “The outstanding learning platform really helped us go through the motions in a smoother way, and the teachers are knowledgeable and patient, and everyone - teaching and non-teaching staff - is incredibly driven to help us achieve something that we all know is quite challenging.”
Something that was especially surprising to Thaís was how Germans were not as distant and hard to befriend as she imagined them to be. “I have met friendly people, willing to open up, who gave me the chance to cultivate new relationships and strive for a better life here. Also, learning the language is a challenge, but trying to get by in my daily life speaking German turned out to be less stressful than I’d imagined,” she says.
Thaís tells us she was lucky to meet several people to help her navigate through this quite difficult language when communication issues occurred and that, in general, people appreciated her efforts to learn instead of pointing out mistakes.
Thaís tells us she’d like to put down roots in Germany and find a job. Her chances are perfect: 93 percent of Le Wagon graduates score a job within the first three months after the camp!
Her dream career? To work as a frontend-, backend- web developer or UX / UI designer. She intends to deepen her knowledge of these subjects and develop her skill set. To her, Le Wagon opened doors that she never knew she was able to reach and pass through. The key to it all, Thaís is sure, is to enjoy the process:
“I realised that, with some help coming from the right places, our personal efforts do pay off. Now, not only do I believe a career in tech is within my reach, but I’m also enjoying myself in the process. I’m incredibly thankful for the outstanding opportunity I was given, and I’ll keep working hard to make the most out of it.”
Are you ready to kick-start your very own Germany adventure with Speak & Code? The application deadline for the next round of courses - starting in October - is fast approaching on September 28!
This course is all about learning about product-driven software development (in English), to cover the foundations of full-stack development, while helping you to speak German with confidence, to improve your chances on the job market!
Even better: the Speak & Code programme comes with several financing options that adapt to your individual needs. For example, you can finance the whole course through a “Bildungsgutschein” from the German Federal Labour Office. You can find out more on the Le Wagon website.