I've found that layoffs and RTO have multiplied the toxicity of development communities. People will openly threaten to call your HR department if you say something wrong. Developers and engineers aren't trying to get better, they're just harming each other in a loop until the most evil one survives. It's cut-throat but not even in a good way, just extremely anti-social and aggressive.

I don't recommend any development communities. If you want to try Discord, many people who will try to get you fired are available to chat with. I talk with long time friends who are developers but it's mainly really sad conversations.

How easy is it to call the HR department in the US? Here in Germany, you will almost never be put through to direct departments - especially HR. Because they are bombarded with calls from headhunters or agencies trying to sell them their services.

This. Exceptions: Hacker News and... Irc servers. Python devs are very kind for example on irc