I’ve known different guys who have gone with both of your scenarios. All fighter guys (but flying T38’s), all got jobs with a major eventually. The guy that went to a regional was pretty low time, about 1500 hours. He spent just over a year there and then got 4 major offers (not interviews but CJO’s). The two I know that went the sim route actually got hired quicker, but I don’t know their TT. None were WIC grads. To me that ought to hold a lot of weight, but I’m not the King of hiring.

Try to get over 2k hours either way, as I think that looks better.