It’s definitely a tradeoff. I personally have gone through alternate phases where I wanted to be responsible for a huge piece of a small pie (startup) versus a tiny tiny piece of a huge pie (big company). There are pros and cons to both. The big slice of small pie feels cooler and more satisfying to my ego, but in the absolute sense the tiny piece of the big pie probably is actually making a bigger difference. 1% improvement at some of these companies means north of billions of dollars and improving hundreds of millions of peoples lives.
The absolute numbers may feel like you are improving the lives of billions but a 1% increase in some matrix that gives google billions rarely helps millions and often hurts.
This might be true in some cases, but given the level of generality being discussed, how can you justify the “rarely” and “often”?
I agree that sometimes our actions have unintended consequences. These are often hidden effects, which makes it easier for someone to overlook, even when they are trying to do good. But that’s just a generic idea - the specifics matter.
