I definitely agree that some companies are clearly doing more to <i>directly</i> address &quot;big world problems&quot;. I can&#x27;t give you a list of the ones that are though, but you see some stuff in the news, esp. here on HN.  Lots of companies have been mentioned recently, for example, who were working on fusion power.<p>All of that said, let me take a minute to defend the seemingly no-so-important type companies.  Let&#x27;s take, say, Facebook.  On one hand, you could say that Facebook is just a way to sell advertising based on the actions and opinions of a bunch of self-centered, narcissistic twits who think he world cares what they have to say.  And you&#x27;d probably be mostly right as far as &quot;Facebook the product&quot;. BUT... in their defense, &quot;Facebook the company&quot; have done some cool stuff, especially in terms of the cool Open Source software they&#x27;ve released over the years.  React, Presto, Thrift, etc. have been used, or are being used, by people tackling all sorts of other problems.<p>And you can say the same thing about several other companies who have, at least, given the world some really cool code over the years: Oracle (via the Sun Microsystems acquisition mostly), Google, Yahoo, Twitter, etc.<p>Now, of course, code by itself doesn&#x27;t solve antibiotic resistance, or world hunger, or poverty, but it can help.  So if you were looking for a company to work for and had to go for somebody who wasn&#x27;t, say, directly tackling world hunger, at least go for a company that&#x27;s known for sharing cool technology with the rest of the world.