I agree with them at this point, it's just going to take a little while to get a freebsd workflow that I'm comfortable with.

did you not get the main point? if for some reason you feel you must avoid systemd, even though it provides enormous benefits (especially for servers), you can.

He's using FreeBSD. He has no choice; systemd isn't available for BSD.

you may have misread... he appears to be switching to FreeBSD because he's upset at systemd. I was pointing out that switching off Linux to avoid systemd is unnecessary, as-per this article and many more.

just out of curiosity, have you ever run servers in a professional capacity?

care to comment on what exactly about systemd is bad for servers?

Did you read the article? It's only needed if you want Gnome to work, not Debian. That means sysadmin don't need that shim since they shouldn't need Gnome in the first place.

Get your head out of the sand.