Large vs. Small Companies: Which Is Better To Work For?

Dear Import/Export Compliance Manager,

As an import/export compliance professional, is it better to work for a large company or a small one?

Mindful in Mesa

Dear Mindful,

The short answer is the classic one: it depends.  You can be nimble at start-ups but it can be difficult to get people to prioritize compliance when they’re focusing on deadlines key to keeping the company afloat.  Large companies have the ‘turning the battleship’ problem, where it can take an act of Congress to get anything done, but are stereotypically more likely to prioritize compliance.  Mid-sized companies are stereotypically somewhere in the middle.  The Import/Export Compliance Manager’s favorite size is mid-sized, where the company is small enough to avoid the battleship problem but large enough to be interesting and (hopefully) have a stable business.

Before we get into some major detail, we must state that size is relative.  Just like how most Americans think they are middle class because we all compare ourselves to the next door neighbors with more money than us and think they’re upper class, companies with 5,000 employees can think they’re only mid-size because their chief competitor has 70,000 employees.  For the purposes of this answer, the Import/Export Compliance Manager will define small as having an import/export compliance department of 1-3 employees and large as having 8 or more. 

The main difference between working at a small company versus a large one can be summarized in one word: specialization.  Think of it in terms of how a company grows from a start-up to a well-established enterprise.  At first, there is just the CEO/founder performing all of the jobs including product development, sales, marketing, finance, etc.  As the company grows, specialists are hired to fill all of those roles.  The bigger the company, the greater the specialization.  At some point, the company is large enough to hire another specialist: the import/export compliance person.  At first that person does just about everything related to managing import/export compliance but eventually a new person must be hired to help out.  The duties are split, usually with one employee being the manager of the other.  Maybe both handle things like classification, approval of shipping invoices, providing training, managing the customs brokers, applying for export licenses, etc.  When there is a department of fifteen import/export compliance people, however, most will be fairly specialized in one of the beforementioned operations.

What does this mean for you?  Simple; working for a small company will make you more of a generalist than a specialist.  On the face of it, this may seem that you are, as the saying goes, ‘a jack of all trades, master of none’.  What is really means is that you have your fingers in many more operations than your colleagues at the larger companies.  Instead of being in one area, for example, export licensing, you deal with export licensing, import operations, ITAR, product classification, valuation, the whole bit.  Maybe you’re not the valuation expert but you’re well aware of what is going on due to your close proximity to the other person in your 2-3 person department managing it.  Even if you don’t own it, someone has to be the back-up when your colleague (or employee) takes that two week vacation to Saskatoon. 

The benefit of generalization is that you will be a more desirable candidate for more types of jobs in import/export compliance.  Most companies hiring import/export compliance personnel favor experience over talent; the more experience you have in more areas, the more capable you appear on paper.  There is less worry over you being able to learn the topic because you’ve already dealt with it or been heavily exposed to it.  If you have been managing solely product classification, you will have a tougher road to get that all-purpose analyst job or import/export compliance manager job.  Not that you couldn’t do it, of course, just that you don’t have as powerful a resume based on job responsibilities alone.

On the whole, large companies pay better, especially for upper management, but there are always exceptions.  If you want to make a massive salary, get in with a large company and work your way up to an upper management position.

Large companies are hands-down more likely to have automated import/export compliance systems in place while small companies will be closer to the world of Excel spreadsheets and ERPs without import/export compliance functionality.  The price tags from the vendors you see at conferences should be enough to tell you that.  $300,000 doesn’t look like as much to a $1 billion company as it does to a $50 million company.

That being said, don’t expect that if you work at a large company budget will be thrown at you.  You’ll find that budget is a headache at every single company, regardless of size; it’s more a factor of company culture, profitability and likely the priorities (and incentives) of the person or persons controlling the purse strings.  It also may seem paradoxical that a department of twenty-five people could be understaffed but yep, that happens too. 

Ditto for stability.  Don’t expect that ultimately your job is any more safe with a larger company than a smaller one.  Again, this depends on the specific company you are looking at.  Larger companies are at less risk of being acquired, but they can be just as susceptible to layoffs.  Start-ups are by far the most precarious, but can have major upside if the company’s business takes off.

The Import/Export Compliance Manager is a face-to-face kind of guy who loves making quality management system documents and process improvements quickly while still involving stakeholders.  Stereotypically, the best environment for this at mid-sized companies.  However, we all have different personalities and thus different companies work for different people.  Take the above advice and decide what works best for you, Mindful.  Good luck!