Hmm, I think it depends on what "meaningful" means. I don't mean to break out the Clintonisms but it depends on what you are looking for. I've worked in hardwar

Hmm, I think it depends on what "meaningful" means. I don't mean to break out the Clintonisms but it depends on what you are looking for. I've worked in hardware product firms, software product firms, and trading firms. Is it "meaningful" to spend my days figuring out ways to get more people to click on more adverts? Not really. Build a social network for dogs' left testicles? Not really. Squeeze another dollar out of the equity markets? Not really. Build a faster database? Build a web analytics tool so people can squeeze out a few more conversions? Take a few cycles out of a market data feed handler to lower latency for a trading algorithm? No, no, and nope. Are there good side effects from the above? Sure, we can come up with examples. For finance, you can take a look at the tightening of spreads (e.g. hft tends to make spreads go to their minimum making trades cheaper for everyone). Or adding liquidity in regular conditions so when someone small like a retail user comes along to sell some stock they get a good price quickly (not always of course, I mean really, you expect smart teams to take obviously dumb trades in an illiquid market?). Or more rapid price discovery (i.e. if something is mispriced it tends to get arb'ed away pretty rapidly, so that is faster info dissemination). Can it be fun? Sure. Is it more good for the world than bad? Yup, I think so. Is it /meaningful/? Is it bollocks. None of the above is meaningful compared to other things in my life. Important things like my family and trying to leave the world a better place than I found it (e.g. I give to charity -- probably more than most will ever earn). That, and I'm with Vonnegut. "We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.".