"It's definitely a challenging (but very rewarding) wild ride, and a fantastic launchpad to pave your own path in the tech world."
I. Can you introduce yourself to our community?
Hi there! Nice to meet you, I'm Farida, and I was part of batch #256. My interests include fiddling with music machines, a decentralised web, and bringing 90's RnB back. Formally, I am a UX Designer and a freelance web developer with interests in designing and building playful products.
II. What decided you to learn to code and to join Le Wagon?
I've always been lurking around the internet. I spent most of my teens creating low-fi resource websites for other web design-hobbyists. There was always a strong sense of community and knowledge sharing back then. So I've always had a penchant for coding.
My career officially started off in Uni doing a bunch of freelance jobs. Then, I moved into a web design role where I learnt a bit of WordPress development for small businesses around Melbourne. Eventually, I hit a ceiling and I realised that I needed to upskill - enter Le Wagon!
III. How would you describe your experience in Le Wagon?
I was incredibly nervous going in, but once we started learning very practical skills very quickly, I realised what a good decision I had made. These folks don't mess around: it's straight to business. The batch sizes are small so all your questions get answered, your peers are awesome and the mentors and teachers are essentially massive brains with legs attached to them. It's the perfect cocktail of ingredients to succeed in your learning. And meeting a bunch of fellow nerds for daily nerd-outs was basically a dream for me.
After only 9 weeks I was delightfully surprised at how ready I felt to enter the tech and startup scene - not only with integral coding concepts under my belt but also knowing how best to collaborate with a diverse range of humans using agile methodologies. Le Wagon helped inform the type of work culture I wanted to be apart of: driven yet humble, and a bit (read: very) silly.
"After only 9 weeks, I was delightfully surprised at how ready I felt to enter the tech
and startup scene."
IV. So, what's up since you graduated? What are you doing at the moment and what are the plans for the future?
I'm currently working at a prop-tech startup as a UX Designer, heavily collaborating with a bunch of great humans. Every day is different and poses new challenges, unearthing problem spaces, double-diamond-ing myself through the discovery process, and providing solutions to suit the context of an ever-changing world. In the future, I still see myself strategically using design and code to solve hard problems, whatever forms that may take!
V. What would you say to someone thinking about joining the course?
Le Wagon is not only about learning to code. It's about learning how to leverage your skills in brand new contexts, how to lean on other people when needed while letting and seeing yourself grow in a multitude of ways. It's definitely a challenging (but very rewarding) wild ride, and a fantastic launchpad to pave your own path in the tech world.
"Le Wagon is not only about learning to code."
