[badpun]

> I, like many of you, work on a project that doesn't really advance humankind. I work on a software product in a niche, within a niche, within a niche, to help a subset of large corporations process data a little bit more effectively during meetings.

Sounds like you're actually contributing to progress?

Also, the Apollo missions were actually just a part of a dick-measuring contest between the two leading empires at the time. Putting a man on the moon contributed nothing to nobody. Your job probably has much more meaning.

[philomath_mn]

Right. I think OP might be conflating "meaning" with "working on a skilled team in order to achieve an audacious goal". Both are fine, but you can have one without the other.

[sircastor]

>Putting a man on the moon contributed nothing to nobody.

I think that’s a little dismissive. The whole of the Apollo missions definitely contributed directly to our understanding of physics, and engineering. It led us to solve problems that otherwise probably wouldn’t have been addressed. And perhaps more important than anything else it inspired people to be interested in science, and exploration.