For the hypothetical Google route, the thing about most (successful) businesses is that if you're making a dollar, they're at least making two. If Google is "ethically complicated," it is unlikely that your personal charity will offset their "complication".
With do-goodering, changes in perspective and nth-order effects can turn that into a brimming cup of regret overnight.
If you just want to live small and and have a positive impact, how about working in a library? They've got those everywhere.
I don't think it's true that if a company is successful then you will make them two dollars for every dollar you get. I think many large companies are profitable due to rent-seeking or externalizing costs, and the marginal gain from the N-thousandth employee is negative, but they can't lay off employees or even stop hiring because of legal or political reasons. If you get a job with one of these companies, then you are wasting their money, which is a good thing to do against an evil company.
Noam Chomsky has been repeatedly asked whether capitalism is a good thing after all because the average quality of life has improved under it. His reply is that average quality of life improved under slavery too, but that's not a justification for slavery. You can see him discuss this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6QAqU2KpaY.
You and I are having the reverse conversation, which is whether it's better to participate in a harmful system for the sake of making any progress, or better to opt out entirely. Actually, because humanity is currently headed off a cliff due to climate change and the worldwide rise of authoritarian governments, the choice is between participating in the harmful system or allowing large-scale catastrophe.
I agree that libraries fit the criteria I laid out, but I guess that like other do-good organizations, they are poorly funded and have a glut of trained specialists and willing volunteers. It's a sign of our dysfunctional times that the more directly helpful an organization or job is, the less well funded it will be.
If we safely assume that IBM has a lot of unproductive admin staff who are collecting paychecks to surf Facebook all day, a competent and motivated developer is actually bringing a lot more than $244,447 in additional profits to the table.
That, and most "QOs" I've encountered are fronts/whitewash/greenwash/etc for larger and more malevolent concerns.
Without a major streak of luck, I think living small and setting a good example is the best any of us can reliably do.
The article you linked is about revenue, not profits, but that doesn't really matter for the argument.
I don't think you can divide $X revenue by N employees and say that therefore there must be some employee pulling in at least $X/N revenue, or at least say that in a way that matters. Imagine a hypothetical tech startup with $1 billion revenue and 10 employees. Is one developer there necessarily bringing in at least $100 million? Would you hire that developer for $50 million and consider it a deal? What if most of that $1 billion came from a single government contract with a serious conflict of interest?
Anyway I think that working for a large organization at a big salary and coming out morally ahead is theoretically possible but very difficult. I don't think I'm cut out for it, myself.
With do-goodering, changes in perspective and nth-order effects can turn that into a brimming cup of regret overnight.
If you just want to live small and and have a positive impact, how about working in a library? They've got those everywhere.