This is the beginning of the Python 3 nonsense, not the end yet. It will end when the Python 3 joke is scrapped and replaced with Python 4 as a SEAMLESS continuation of Python 2.
What's special about "systems work" that makes python3 worse in your experience? (also, was is "systems work" for you, since I might be misinterpreting that -> I am assuming "low-level unix scripting" or something like that)
In my last three companies, the bulk of the infrastructure was defined and managed via Python scripts (a lot of this predated Ansible being great), so what gets forgotten is the literal billions of lines of custom wrappers and classes that are broken, usually on the print statement v function debate or how string formatting works. I can't justify hiring someone to dig through all that code just to bring it up to snuff and everything needs tweaking. Usually we end up just writing new code in another language and call it from python or the other way around. I can't seem to get comfortable handling both versions in one project without getting REALLY frustrated. So, yeah, a fork with the niceties from python3 that allow my tech debt to still run (and hopefully better), allowing me to replace bits (likely into non python languages - Go is growing on me) at a time and not en masse is pretty frikken awesome.
