Work for a privately owned company, any shareholder owned one will by definition kill its own staff and their families to make a profit.

does th company make an active effort lead by the owners or leadership team to cancel out the effects of other companies. (e.g. engange with local community, promote work life balance)?

if its a partnership or employee owned then its also probably good, but some partnerships (where there are 10 to 100s of partners) then it becomes like a publicly owned company again and no individuals feel their personal reputation is at stake.

personal reputation is about the only thing you can rely on when it comes to not being shitty, as it all comes down to trust really.

You might work for one that contributes directly to preventing the downfall of humanity. Sadly, that is non-profits / research mostly - and hilariously they will generally treat you like absolute garbage (which to me feels almost as bad as the knowledge that I'm basically working for Sauron) if you do IT work.

Work for a small company. Even if they're cartoonishly evil, the capability of being so is limited.

And so most aren't.

Also with a small company you'll know just about everything the company is "doing" whereas if you're working for (Rackspace, Google, Meta, etc) you have a very good chance of not knowing what the company is doing somewhere until it becomes a major news headline.