All the schools around here are croaking for CFIs. The run on pilots in 2007-2008 ate up a lot of "seed corn" before the ATP rule came into being.
I think a good portion of the kvetching is a blown-up version of "I don't want to instruct" that I heard back in the 80's by guys who were too lazy to take the road everyone else took. Some guys that blew it off and got lucky, and that job sweeping the hangar paned out into the right seat job when some fabulously unlikely set of events put them in the "hey you, with the broom" category, but far more often or not those deals came by familial connections of some kind. Sure the CFI ride is tough, but it made ME a better pilot, and more importantly, a better PIC.
The other important thing to consider is that the civilian version of ab-initio is NOT what the military does. NOT. EVEN. CLOSE. Comparisons between the two are absolutely comical, and, IMHO, is just someone trying to latch on to something that sounds similar so that the good results from one might rub off on another.
There are a LOT of competing interests here, and not all of them are aligned, or are as impartial, the way you'd think.
Personally, I think CFI time does everyone a tremendous amount of good. Learn how to manage a student, equipment, weather, management and yourself while consolidating what you've learned. Good multi-tasking practice, a good way to learn the "big picture" of what's really important, learn how to tune out people who's opinion doesn't really matter, and see how you handle yourself when weird crap happens.
I think Ernie Gann said it best in "Fate is the Hunter". Essentially, you really DON'T know how anyone is going to perform when the chips are really down until they are actually in that position. Sure, you can try to simulate it, but it is never the same. Ever. What the 1,500 hour rule does is provide a long vetting process. Make it through the gauntlet of bad students, personal economic distress, crap weather, nasty bosses and frangible equipment, and you've got some street cred, rather than someone who's going to pop a fuse when something happens that gets you off the procedure a scintilla.
Richman