I'm not sure to what extent this is systemd, the author's setup, or the integration work on part of Debian.
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter. It turns out that a lot of Linux distros really don't have very adequate systemd bootstraps at this point, which you'll find the systemd developers admitting (including, and in my personal experience, especially for Fedora): http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Optimizations/
When you factor in the fact that Debian and other distributions have some absolutely strange packaging policies concerning when and to where to include systemd as a dependency, coupled with the fact that most distros still don't have good mechanisms for separating hard and soft dependencies, and you get some pretty confused default configurations.
I once tried compiling and booting from systemd on a Lubuntu box, out of my own curiosity. It worked, and there were already some predefined unit files from systemd-shim and various system packages. Performance was good. I tried upgrading my system... the process is absolutely broken, due to preinst/postinst scripts assuming Upstart. Sometimes a package will get successfully unpacked, sometimes it won't. Error messages galore.
Considering systemd's extensively rapid evolution, I don't see integration work in most distros stabilizing or being optimized very soon.
I have been half-following this whole saga and as far as I can tell, it's a shit-show on a scale that runs the risk of turning entire distro major releases into complete write-offs. I just hope they only go one release cycle before deciding to abandon it. I'll get on the last pre-systemd LTS and hold my breath.
They don't see the benefit of keeping critical system components simple, they don't listen to criticism, they make promises they can't keep, and they've bitten off way more than they're capable of chewing. The only part I really can't figure out is why major distros have actually decided to make the switch way before any of the tech is ready.
One of the things they're planning next is to replace the current kernel VT implementation with a userland terminal emulator that depends on systemd, so you won't even be able to boot with init=/bin/bash in a pinch because without systemd there won't be any terminal to run it on anymore. No idea how people will be expected to diagnose and fix issues that break boot at that point.
Pick a 'usb stick' distro of choice (my choice is usually sysrescuecd) and boot that image off of media or virtual media if you have one of those remotely managed systems. Though it sure would be nice if said systems could pull the image off of a mirror local to the DC.
Alternatively, build a similar rescue option in to your boot menu; if that's broken you've got no choice anyway.
USB rescue distros are nice, but that assumes you have a USB stick to use and already had the rescue distro installed. That doesn't help when you are trying to fix some failed update late at night with the computer in question being the only hardware available. Contrived example? Yes, but I've been in more or less that situation a couple times in the past and was very thankful that init=/bin/bash worked as a fallback.
// yes, most of the time I just put fallback/rescue options in the boot menu
Cryptsetup was known to require a bit more work. Debian has some specific stuff for that AFAIK. Same thing with ZFS. Just things that need fixing.
I find the entire blogpost rather encouraging. Let's get those bugs fixed as well! Doom and gloom is rather weird attitude IMO, it's on loads of distributions and for various releases of those distributions. It is not without bugs, first release within any distribution is going to have a few issues. Fairly logic that with aim of Debian (everything has to work), it'll take a bit longer.
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter. It turns out that a lot of Linux distros really don't have very adequate systemd bootstraps at this point, which you'll find the systemd developers admitting (including, and in my personal experience, especially for Fedora): http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Optimizations/
When you factor in the fact that Debian and other distributions have some absolutely strange packaging policies concerning when and to where to include systemd as a dependency, coupled with the fact that most distros still don't have good mechanisms for separating hard and soft dependencies, and you get some pretty confused default configurations.
I once tried compiling and booting from systemd on a Lubuntu box, out of my own curiosity. It worked, and there were already some predefined unit files from systemd-shim and various system packages. Performance was good. I tried upgrading my system... the process is absolutely broken, due to preinst/postinst scripts assuming Upstart. Sometimes a package will get successfully unpacked, sometimes it won't. Error messages galore.
Considering systemd's extensively rapid evolution, I don't see integration work in most distros stabilizing or being optimized very soon.