If all you do in your tech career is:

1. When something is slow, you look carefully at the output of a profiler or a query plan & make measured suggestions about what to improve;

2. When something breaks badly, you gently but insistently ask what & why until you truly know, then the next time similar work is needed you bring up how to avoid doing what broke last time; and

3. When someone lacks info, you make them feel good for learning instead of bad for not knowing;

You will do good work.

Of course you can aim higher. It doesn't feel like the glory days of early computerization where a week in the server closet can change the world, but there are still a million ways we can make things work better in the large and in the small.

But you can do a lot of good by doing the basics really well. People will thank you for it, sincerely, because it's more than many folks contribute. You can set a good example, you can hold out a helping hand; you can prove it's not a zero-sum game.