My experince is coming soley from the point of view of someone whose entire career has been in combat engineer line companies, I could see how in many non-combat units that would not work out. In a line unit however, an OBC fresh 2LT who wants to do everything his way is going to get soldiers killed in a hurry, if they follow him. I have always felt the having a good platoon sgt. will deterine a lot about how far a new officer goes later in his career. Yeah, there are some bad NCO's out there for sure, unit and branch tolerances seem to breed them in some locations and MOS's, I see a lot more in some types of units that I deal with than others.
Odds are I will never see E-7 even though I am in the slot now, I am putting in a Warrant packet in the next few months and we will see if I get picked up. But never turn down a school or fail to have a backup plan, if for some reason the Warrant board turns me down I will have my ducks in a row to pick up my 7. I will most likely turn some heads down there, at 25 I will be younger than a whole lot of the PLDC students. It will be interesting.
I started working towards a comission, but after serving for a few years while taking ROTC in college I deceided that I would rather go the NCO and possibly Warrant course, my leadership style is more of an "in front" style and better suited for work within "The last 50 yards" where wars are won or lost. Gotta go where your strong points are, it's worked for me so far.