Comment by bruce511

The big tech companies are cash-rich, can afford to hire (and pay) top people and are looking for things for those people to do.

In other words their motivations and your and my motivations are different. I have limited cash, and my primary goal is expanding my ability to get more cash.

By contrast, the Google's of this world have too much cash. Their primary goal is finding things to depend the cash on (billions at a time) that can return, or at least potentially return, either mountains of more cash, or a competitive advantage.

So yes, for them, hard problems, the harder the better, are desirable.