Luke: You leave out a very important point and that is the rules of the game have changed since you and Jonny were selling lemonade and mommy's fresh baked treats on the side of the street.
OK. A young person becomes an instructor and aquires thousands of hours teaching others to fly the Piper Seneca or C-172. So frickin' what. Ten years ago that counted as experience. Today that counts as a huge waste of time. Why? Because airlines hiring today don't give a rat's ass about that. They want a person who can fork over thousands to pay for their job AND/OR you have the correct type of hours, i.e. you have a Type Rating and a min. of a few hundred hours in TYPE.
Hey man, I think going out there and teaching Susie VMC demos is great....but that is not going to get you the job in TODAY'S MARKET!
So I'm assuming you fly for Emirates, Ethiad, Qatar, Gulf....etc, or one of those 8 star airlines. Fantastic. Congrats. Seriously, that's great how you climbed the ladder: SEP, MEP, Turboprop, Jet. This is the way it used to be done and I personally wish that is the way it was today. However, wishing and reality are apples and oranges, comrade.
I know you mean well, but blowing sunshine up the asses of some of these guys is unrealistic in TODAYS methodology of aquiring pilot employment.
Regards,
UW