Same advice people were giving me in 2008 - "economy is down, go to college, the airlines want to see that and you'll need to wait for the regionals to start hiring again", "you'll need CFI decision making skills because that's PIC time" (insert laugh emoji here)... The reality of the world is hiring trends are dictated by overarching economic factors beyond our control, FE time isn't "valuable"... but you will literally never have another problem with a systems class again, or understanging how things work. 500 hours (1500 P121 FE x 1/3 = 500; FAR 61.159) of it will count towards the ATP (got a plan for the other hours?).

So anyway, I ignored that aforementioned advice and became as 727 FE instead, and have ended up in a comfortable career... all ACMI flying, lived "abroad" my entire adult life, and flown nearly every Boeing product without ever touching a RJ - but at the end of the day all that really is going to matter is "what's the pay and when's the days off?" - however you get there is up to you, but it is all going to be "imperceptable" (as in, "should I have done that?" second guessing) to you so long as you enjoy what you're doing. Though, I would suggest, you at least get IFL to "reduce to writing" a guarantee of upgrade to FO at some point between one and two years.