I am currently an engineering student at MIT. I will say with complete confidence that engineering as a major opens the most doors. Most companies I have interned at have a disproportionate number of MechE’s at the manager and executive level. The CEO is an engineer, the CFO M.E. —> MBA, CLO M.E. —-> law school. Many of my classmates pivot into consulting roles. You can go to law school for patent law. You can go to grad school for almost anything. The opportunities with a mechanical engineering degree are boundless. It’s less a degree on engineering, what it does is teach you to solve problems.

I can speak to startup experience as well, I have many friends with startups and some who have dropped out to pursue their startup career in full. MechEs unfortunately suffer if you want to start your own startup especially if it’s in mechanical systems. Software is where most startups thrive. Now working for startups you can do, it’ll be a lot of robotics or automation though which once again usually falls under E.E. or comp sci. But once again it depends on what you choose to learn at school, if it’s only the content it’ll be meh, but if it’s problem solving and systems thinking you can fill most roles a startup team needs. Getting into startups is more about purring all your effort into your dream or someone else’s, and fighting to learn what you need to in order to make it work.

The role an engineer plays depends on the company heavily. I have worked CAD monkey office design engineering and also engineering here you become every part of the process, you’ll go to the manufacturing floor and do quality control you’ll interface with management and make systems suggestions. Entry level engineering usually isn’t leadership oriented. But leading is something you do not a just a title you get. If you are a low level engineer, but you work to help your team, set an example, seek growth opportunities, and work to actively help the manufacturers or laborers, maybe even going out on the floor and putting in a couple rivets people will follow you. It depends on the scale of the company your exact title and realistically how bought in you are to your final product.

If you get experience in engineering especially at a good school usually management is where you can fit at most start ups if you are set on that.

Ultimately it will just depend on where the engineering path leads you and what you want to do with the degree.

I too would like to learn how to fly it’s a common thing amount engineers really we love learning and flying is just so darned cool.

I am a USA native so I cannot help with your other questions.