Get far away from SOC?

So I was talking with a CISO recently, and he said he makes the following distinction:

• Read Team: if you can do it, go for it because it is very rewarding and that's where you can find most "pros".

• Blue Team: you will learn a lot and has a wide variety of roles and most job offers are for Blue Team anyway.

• SOC: only do it if it is extremely necessary. Avoid it all you can, and if you have to do it, get away as soon as possible.

Now, my question is, how true is this? Is a SOC where cybersecurity careers go to die?

It's obvious that a SOC Analyst Tier 1 should try to move up quickly, but aren't Incident Response and Threat Hunting (considered in many SOCs Tier 2 and Tier 3 respectively) good places to be?

Is the only "proper" way up to become a Security Engineer? Can't a good Threat Hunter or DFIR professional have the same consideration as a SecEng?