Ask HN: Is doing tech-related work in the American medical field horrible?

I worked in med tech for the first 5 years of my career. The name of the game is regulation - everything is done to serve regulatory bodies. The amount of real innovation, even in "R&D" groups, is extremely small. Expect to spend much of your time wrangling documents (literally Word documents sometimes), with the occasional line or two of code per week if you're lucky. Don't get me started on meetings...

Even people with Ph.Ds spent their days being tortured by documents. Maybe startups are better, but big med tech is not a fun place to work. The people who succeeded and enjoyed the work, were the ones who knew how to play politics, or how to successfully avoid it.

"Getting in" where, in what sort of role? There are vast differences between low-level controller programming for CAT scanners vs. being a Sales Engineer for some huge "does it all" hospital management software suite vs. being on SecTeam at 23&Me.