Oh really?
I heard only yesterday of an entirely self-funded Air Engineer who's just been offered a job with a well-repected turboprop airline. No FI rating, no zillions of hours up and down East Florida in a clapped-out C152, just a plain vanilla fATPL.....
Top of the military dunghill? With all the associated stress that goes with it these days.....?? Perhaps running some god-awful Det in whichever country Trust-me-Tone has dutifully followed the Mad Cowboy into? With bugger all chance of any more time in the cockpit?
Or fly for the airlines..? Now that the RAF isn't what many people chose to join, that decision is perhaps easier to make than it was even 5 years ago.