Le Wagon Alumni Story: How Damon Built the Confidence as a Tech Builder

Damon wanted a career where he could create something useful. After studying economics and working in risk analysis, management consulting and recruitment, he still felt something was missing. While working at the stock exchange, he told a senior colleague he didn’t feel he had the skills to build anything. The response stuck with him:

“Don’t worry about it, Damon. I don’t have any skills at all, and I’m doing great.”

It wasn’t the reassurance he wanted.

A move into product management introduced Damon to tech, and he discovered how much he enjoyed building products. He tried studying computer science at university, then pursued his own app idea. Through self-taught coding and online resources, he built an app that he eventually sold to a nonprofit.

But despite that achievement, he felt his programming was scrappy and his foundations weren’t strong enough. The endless tutorials, frameworks and developer roadmaps left him overwhelmed.

Finding structure at Le Wagon

Damon wanted a practical way to connect what he already knew and fill the gaps. That search brought him to Le Wagon Melbourne—although its glowing reviews initially made him suspicious.

“I was worried it was going to be a scam,” he admits.

A down-to-earth conversation with Paal helped reassure him, and he decided to take the leap.

What stood out was the emphasis on building products people actually want. Learning a concept and immediately applying it helped the technical pieces come together.

He left with stronger foundations and the confidence to keep learning. Career advice also encouraged him to pursue contracting, which he did for around five years before joining a large technology company in New Zealand. Today, he’s back contracting while developing his own app ideas.

Why the fundamentals still matter

For Damon, AI makes building faster, but understanding what you’re building remains essential. You still need to recognise when something goes wrong, understand why and create software that works for people.

Watch Damon’s interview to hear:

• Why he moved from finance into tech.
• How he overcame information overload while learning to code.
• What surprised him about Le Wagon Melbourne.
• How practical learning helped him gain confidence.
• Why he believes coding fundamentals remain valuable in the age of AI.

His advice is straightforward: keep learning the fundamentals, then use them to build something useful.

Full transcript:

Jamie — Interviewer
Damon — Alumnus

Jamie (00:11): Tell us a little about yourself, your background and what you’re doing at the moment.

Damon (00:23): My name’s Damon. I had a wandering career journey before I got into tech. I worked at the NZX doing risk analysis, playing around on spreadsheets all day. Then I had a stint as a management consultant and worked in recruitment.

I studied economics and did my honours at university, but I hated every white-collar job I had. They felt miserable and arduous, with tons of monotony every day.

I remember telling someone at the stock exchange, “I don’t feel like I have any skills. I don’t have any way to create or build.” He was much more senior than me and said, “Don’t worry about it, Damon. I don’t have any skills at all, and I’m doing great.”

I thought, “That’s not what I want to hear.”

I eventually found my way into a product manager role and fell in love with tech. I loved building things. That was in 2018, or maybe 2017.

After that, I spent a year as a founder. I started a diploma in computer science because I wanted to learn to code and build things. I did a semester at university, but it wasn’t very useful. I learned computer science fundamentals, but it didn’t teach me how to build products people wanted.

I had an app idea and decided to pursue it. I worked on it for a year and sold it to a nonprofit, which was good. But I was a lousy programmer.

I was mostly self-taught, with a semester and a half of university behind me. Everything I’d learned was hacky and scrappy.

Afterwards, I wanted to get some fundamentals behind me. I’m incredibly impatient, so I decided to go to a bootcamp. I looked around for the best one and found Le Wagon in Melbourne. I liked Melbourne, so I thought, “Why not go there for a bit and get into it?”

That’s the wandering journey.

Jamie (03:06): Before Le Wagon, were you teaching yourself through online resources and YouTube? What else were you doing?

Damon (03:15): Everything. I did freeCodeCamp, tons of online resources and Wes Bos’s 30-day JavaScript challenge.

I had my main app project, and at night I’d work through different resources and learn.

I was motivated, but I struggled with information overload. There was a massive amount to learn. I’d follow developer roadmaps that said, “Learn this, then that, then work your way through these things.”

For everything—caching, front end, different frameworks—there was a wealth of information. It was overwhelming.

What I needed was someone to boil it down and say, “This is what you need to do. These are the fundamentals. That’s it.”

Jamie (04:16): Was there anything you were worried about before committing? It’s a significant investment of time and money. What was weighing on your mind?

Damon (04:27): I was worried it was going to be a scam.

At that point, it had something like a 4.99 out of five rating. I thought, “Yeah, right.” It sounded too good to be true.

I’m sceptical of most things. Every person was saying it was amazing, which set off my detector. I was cautious, but everything I could find suggested it was good.

Either they had the most amazing coordinated review operation on the planet, or it was legitimate.

Then I had an interview with Paal. He was so down to earth that I immediately thought, “This sounds legitimate.” I was very excited after that.

Jamie (05:37): One of my questions was going to be what nearly stopped you, but you answered that with, “I thought it was going to be a scam.”

Then you got to speak to Paal. I’ve never heard that answer before—it made me laugh.

Damon (05:54): It’s the truth.

Jamie (05:56): What did you enjoy most about the course? Was there anything that surprised you?

Damon (06:04): Looking back, I have a much better answer than I would have had during the course or immediately afterwards.

I’ve now worked across startups, enterprise and very large tech companies. At Le Wagon, you learn product inside out. You learn how to build something, test it and get it out.

That was the big differentiator for me. It was very product-focused. It wasn’t just about data structures and algorithms. You learn some of that, but the focus was on building things, getting them in front of users and doing the design. It felt like a full package for tech.

That’s such an important skill. One of the biggest things lacking everywhere I’ve worked is building things people want and find useful. That’s the fundamental job of an engineer, and Le Wagon emphasised it throughout the course.

It’s more important now than ever. Wherever you work, the crux of every team is, “How do we build a feature people like?”

The technical aspects matter, but there’s also the fundamental question of how you get it in front of people.

Le Wagon’s sprint structure worked really well. I’ve worked at companies that are atrocious at that. Le Wagon had a good system: learn something, apply it quickly and move on to the next thing.

Jamie (07:45): As a career coach, I emphasise understanding how you learn best. How did you find the teaching style, the people around you and the support?

Damon (08:03): When I finished, I thought, “Why wouldn’t this become the new learning methodology over the next ten years?” That prediction hasn’t come to pass, but it makes so much sense.

People say they’re visual learners or another type of learner. I think most people benefit from learning a small concept, implementing it repeatedly and doing that in a social environment. It’s a perfect learning style.

I wasn’t a great university student, and I was an even worse high school student. I’m reasonably good at talking, so I managed to talk my way into honours.

But I’m very bad at rote learning. That held me back at university.

Le Wagon was perfect: you learn a little theory and immediately apply it. It’s a wonderful way to learn and caters to many different people.

You can take in the knowledge however you prefer—reading or listening—but then you have to apply it. There’s a big emphasis on practical application.

Jamie (09:31): What was your “aha” moment, when everything clicked and started making sense?

Damon (09:46): In terms of learning web development?

Jamie (09:49): Yes. The moment you thought, “I can build now. I understand the flow and the technology.”

Damon (09:54): Probably during the MVP project. That’s where it came together.

I had a rocky road because I went surfing, hit my head on a rock and missed a few days of the bootcamp.

When I was able to come back, I remember walking in and having a list of bugs. I immediately got into that iterative style of working: find the bug, understand how the front end and back end connect, isolate the issue, fix it and move on.

We worked through this massive list of bugs before demo day. That was useful.

I can’t remember the exact order we learned everything, but they gradually introduced the fundamentals, front end and back end. Testing them together at the end was useful because it became easy to isolate where something was happening across the stack.

So, towards the end.

Jamie (11:10): I’m trying to work out whether you need a bang on the head for it all to click. That’s not something we offer on the course, but if it helps, we can arrange something.

Tell me about the final project. What did you build?

Damon (11:27): It was based around self-improvement: tracking your goals and how you were improving against them. It was a habit-tracking app with a leaderboard.

I was also helping a friend on the course who was building a story app. Funnily enough, I’m now running with that as an idea.

Jamie (12:00): Do you think you changed during the course? Did you come out with a different focus?

Damon (12:10): I had a ton of confidence after finishing.

I came in feeling scrappy: “I can build something, but not really.” I’d built something good enough to sell, but it was a bad piece of software.

Afterwards, I had much more confidence. I knew enough to keep learning, understand my strengths and identify my weaknesses.

I felt I could learn anything and see how to find my way through tech.

If I didn’t know something, I at least knew where to go, what information mattered and what didn’t. That was the big difference.

Jamie (12:56): Has that confidence stayed with you?

Damon (13:01): A hundred per cent. I might be a little overconfident, though. I tend to take on things I probably shouldn’t.

It’s the best way to learn. Take on things you don’t understand, and you’ll figure them out.

Especially if you stake your name on it and think, “If this doesn’t work, I’m going to look like a fool in front of a lot of people.” You’ll pretty much always figure it out.

Jamie (13:27): How did you find the career support, general support and community during and after the course?

Damon (13:38): It was really good.

I remember a conversation with you about looking beyond a traditional job and becoming the go-to person—building a contracting or consulting pipeline.

That’s exactly what I did for about five years. It was awesome, and I loved every second.

The contract market imploded around 2022. After that, I got a job at a big tech company in New Zealand. All my experience helped me get into that role, and I’ve since been able to move back into contracting.

Paal and everyone in the Le Wagon community are incredibly helpful in getting you into whatever suits you, whether it’s your first job or taking a punt on an app you want to build.

You, Paal and everyone else were enormously helpful.

Jamie (15:02): I’m glad I’ve got this on video. I’ve finally found somebody who took my advice.

Two last questions. If you hadn’t done the course, where do you think you’d be now?

Damon (15:17): I probably would have gone back to university and followed a more traditional path. I think that would have taken much longer, and I’m not very well suited to it.

I probably would have got an internship, worked for a tech company and worked my way up.

I suspect I’d be much further behind in my career. Le Wagon was a real accelerator because I could go out and talk about building things for users.

A lot of interns come out focused on optimisation or choosing the right sorting algorithm. A lot of the time, what matters in the industry is figuring out how to get something into the market quickly.

Damon (16:24): I think I’d be much further behind. It helped push me ahead very quickly.

Jamie (16:30): If a friend were in the same position you were, thinking about Le Wagon or transitioning into tech, what would you say?

Damon (16:43): I’d definitely recommend it. A hundred per cent.

Tech is in an interesting place at the moment, but I can’t imagine not needing to know the fundamentals or not benefiting from something like Le Wagon.

In this era of agentic coding, you still need to understand where something goes wrong, why it’s gone wrong and how to architect something that works for people.

In that sense, nothing has changed. You can ship code much faster now, but if you don’t understand what you’re shipping or why something is wrong, you’ll end up in a precarious, difficult position.

Understanding the fundamentals is useful. I can’t imagine that ever not being true.

Jamie (17:42): Is there anything I should have asked, or anything you’d like to share with people considering Le Wagon or getting into tech, whether early or late in their careers?

Damon (17:56): I still think there’s a huge amount of value and a strong future in this field.

You need to learn the fundamentals, and the upside is massive. You can do much more now, and there’s more leverage than before.

My suggestion would be to go and learn the fundamentals.

Jamie (18:21): What does the future look like for Damon?

Damon (18:25): I’m still contracting, and I’ve got two projects I’m working on.

Since leaving Le Wagon, my approach has been to contract while working on an app I think could make money, or just something for fun.

I’ve been obsessed with organising financial information, which is more interesting than it sounds.

The other project relates to my friend’s story app from the bootcamp.

Earlier this year, I was travelling around Sri Lanka. Everywhere I went, I wanted to hear the heritage behind the place, but there wasn’t anything available.

We’d been talking about the idea for a while, so I thought, “Why not finally turn it into an app? I’ll run with it and see how it goes.”

I’m working on those two things, and it’s a lot of fun.

Jamie (19:29): You’re still building, experimenting and having fun, and that confidence and positive attitude have stayed with you.

Thank you for today. It was all helpful, especially the part about my career advice—I’ll hold on to that.

Thanks for your time. I really appreciate it.