All the ones where the idea was to “just start something, grow grow grow, then figure out monetization later” is wild to me.
E.g. reddit. It worked. CEO is rich, site is still online. Somehow they got investors probably, presumably.
I get not having profit. I get not having income, if it’s in some prototype phase. But having no plan or idea whatsoever for how to monetize and still getting VC? Wild.
It’s not that they are unfriendly.
But they are 100% there to represent the company’s interest and not yours. If there is any way, to… turn a situation into something where the company gets more money out of it and you get less, it’s their job to make that happen.
In theory they should have employee retention in mind. In practice, nobody does their HR that way anymore.
All my interactions with HR have been “professional polite” and appropriately friendly. There is no reason to be unnecessarily mean, they are also just doing their job.