Design Systems Are Bullsh*t

That was a great read.

Afaik, DS enable a scalable and collaborative design process, assuming that everyone play by the same rules. Without a DS, working within a team of highly opinionated designers would be nightmarish and even costlier than making a DS.

I agree with some of your criticism. But I feel like a lot of it stems from the fact that your idea of what a designer's supposed to do clashes with the "new way" designers work when they adopt a DS :

• old designer : generalist, a lot of freedom and room for creativity, end to end control
• new designer : highly specialized, less room for creativity, less influence.

it’s like saying we need a design system so our customers know how to assemble their own app from our react components. It reveals the suggestion that anyone should be able to build a design regardless of expertise"

I agree with this. Handing a DS to non designers will not make them designers.

I've always believed that DS are only meant for designers.

It also surfaces the idea that while some designers (presumably a minority) will have the responsibility for creating the principles and processes, the others will be handed the design system Allen key and charged with the robotic...

That's not a grim vision. Creativity is needed for both tasks : creating the building blocks and assembling. A lot of greatness can emerge from a team of highly specialized roles, like in the game industry.

Time must be invested to not only update the system but communicate any changes across teams"

This could be fixed with proper tooling, not an intrinsic DS flaw.

But by truncating the design process and placing too much emphasis on speed, design systems remove the space needed to question the assumptions behind a task

DS does not take away your design thinking time. I think DS is just tool to use for when you're sure about what you want to design.

Design systems are a single point of failure, as they deliver the same components to multiple product and service touch points across an organization

I think that's a feature.

In a fast-paced work environment, other team members will drop in and find just what they need in order to move on. They will assume that by any kind of lazy reference to the design system they are now good to go.

That sounds like a people problem. DS need to be studied and followed by designers, otherwise they are worthless. Using someone else DS will not make you less of a designer.