If someone will hire you or anyone with 250 hours in the next year or so have at it. I think that being a CFI or other is a prerequisite now and will be for the next few years. Being a CFI makes you an all around better pilot but it will not progress your career necessarily, only time on seniority list will do that.

Theoretically he is correct the faster you get to an airline and start gaining seniority the faster you get to upgrade and the further away from furlough you get and the list goes on. It will be sad though if that upgrade comes in 2 years and you are 2000 hours shy of meeting the mins to upgrade. There are alot of furloughed regional guys that took this same path and their commercial multi ratings with 1000TT and 90 PIC and .35 cents will make a phone call.