I see most often that it's the people who live in init.d - interact with it multiple times a day - who are most vocal about systemd hate. I'm going to call "old dogs don't like new tricks" on that one.

I do get into that layer of system maintenance, but it's maybe 1-2% of my time, mostly a set-it and forget-it kind of relationship. There was a time when the old ways were easier due to more documentation and guides on the internet, which I lean on heavily because I interact with this stuff so rarely. Those days passed, for me, 8-10 years back.

You do realize that it's not a binary between systemd and SysV, right? There are modern replacements for SysV other than systemd, like dinit, OpenRC, s6 and they all strive to address the shortcomings of SysV