systemd tries to make systems easier to administer (by government agencies) and will also make the system architecture less configurable.
systemd is bad because it makes zero sense from systemd's own project perspective (feature bloat). Neither does it make sense from an OS design perspective! But it makes absolute sense in a usability perspective by centralizing OS and boot configuration. Perhaps systemd will standardize a little bit between Linuxes.
Linux is a bad joke in terms of OS design, it was a pet project and never intended to be this popular and everything has just been semi-decently hacked on with quality control by Linus "Screaming Penguin" TorvaldsTM. I kind of hope that systemd succeeds and unifies a bit of the Linuxes for the better. I just hope Hoover's 2016 Henchmen don't implant backdoors in it. It wouldn't surprise me if that happens. But then again they probably don't need any backdoors inserted. :^)
Stop hating systemd for what it isn't and start hating it for what it is: A deviation from the norm with absolutely bad and hopefully some good consequences. I wouldn't hold out for it.
Me personally? I'm holding out on minix getting it's shit together and gaining traction as an enthusiast/glider[1] OS. The incarnation system is really interesting and microkernels make ALL the sense in today's environment. The small performance impact will be fixed in hardware optimizations/extra transistors in northbridges and CPUs in like a couple years, possibly.