A/T less
Financial effect shouldn't be too great. Lets say they recruit 50DEFOs, when you are in the senior group of 50 SOs you will get bypass pay. But you will get your upgrade later and each subsequent FO increment will also be later by the same amount. It will have a financial effect, but not as great as first glance appears! Again, there is an argument that could be made that your command might come earlier because of the training capacity constraint. So what little you lose in delayed FO increments might be made up for with earlier command!
MAX
Lots do move from pax FO to freighter CN...resistance is usually due to pay/basing availablity and I believe there is a higher failure rate...but no numbers to back that up. Not sure about SO-freighter...usually that choice has been made at the recruitment stage...more senior guys usually go onto freighters.
cheers