E2 - Prayson Pate at ADVA

On this episode, James Dean, Director at Hamilton Barnes, speaks with Prayson Pate, Senior VP of Solutions Marketing and CTO of Edge Cloud, about his career in Engineering, from how he started as an Electrical Engineer to now being in the Network Engineering space.

Prayson kickstarted himself into the engineering world by loving to build things when he was young and having a love for Science and Math. When university came around, he knew it would only make sense to take up Engineering as his chosen subject, the degree being in Electrical Engineering.

During the summer of his university course, he landed himself a job, working at a local firm as a Technician doing soldering. With his managers not realising what he was capable of, he managed to take on more duties, and this was where his career in the networking space started.

“One of the things I think is very important is not getting hung up on people’s particular qualifications. I think things like attitude capability and willingness to learn will serve people really well”.

Prayson is living proof that you don’t necessarily need to be qualified in something in order to learn and become successful.

So, what does an average day look like as a Senior VP of Solutions Marketing and CTO of Edge Cloud?

Prayson’s average day is split up into 2 parts, one being Solutions Marketing and the other being the CTO of Edge Cloud group. The Solutions Marketing side is his biggest role which requires him tasks such as working with his team and Project Management to help them formulate collateral such as PowerPoint, white papers and blogs to help support the sales team. The CTO of Edge Cloud group role involves a lot of leadership, writing blogs and engaging with analysts.

He’s not always liked elements of his job though, Prayson says he struggled a lot with the written aspect of his job and hated public speaking, but he explained it’s part and parcel of the job that he now has become to love and has taught himself to embrace it.

What advice would you give to people trying to make a bold move or step out of their comfort zone?

With Prayson opening up about his fear of public speaking and all things that were written related, what advice could he give someone starting out that is having a similar problem?

Prayson speaks about the best yet simplest piece of advice he has given to a friend who had a similar problem to him, “the 600, 3, 2 rule”, 600 words, 3 points and 2 glasses of wine. He says limiting it to 600 words will keep it short and to the point. In those 600 words, make 3 points out of it, again, don’t bombard people with long, drawn-out information that they’ll get bored of reading. And finally, 2 glasses of wine, to get the brain flowing for ideas and lower your self-criticism. What better advice can you get than that?