This is true for exactly 0 engineers at Google and Facebook. Every single one of them could easily find another job if they wanted to leave.
I think you guys seriously need to consider the possibility that these people are actually OK with what they're doing and simply have different values and priorities than you do.
> It's hard for a lot of people to do it in practice though.
The world of development exists outside of the tech giants. There are more people doing dev work outside of those giant companies that are still making an impact.
I don't deny that there can be apathy. Some people show up, do what they're told, and collect money without regards as to what they're doing.
> I don't deny that there can be apathy
I'm not talking about apathy, I'm talking about actually understanding and being OK with what you're doing. Google and Facebook have just short of 90,000 employees between them (not all of them engineers, of course) - it's extremely misanthropic to assume that they are all either apathetic or consciously doing evil.
A very large number of people understand and are largely perfectly OK with the substance of what Facebook and Google are doing.