Closed the page before reading the article for the fact that they popped up a modal advertisement window with a black background - ironic is that Adblock removed the ad content so it was a white box on a black background.
HBR gets a high price for its ads because its audience is older businesspeople (decision makers on high-priced services and products) who consider its content high-worth and authoritative (this attitude rubs off on the ads around the content.) Having a gating ad that scares away people who don't value the content enough to close it probably increases the price per ad more than enough to make up for the slightly decreased viewership of the ad.
Not trying to start a holy war, NoScript isn't a universal cure. There is plenty of content linked to from HN that requires JS. (However, I don't bother reading most of it!)
Or, you can recognise that not functioning at all without JavaScript generally indicates a lack of interest in the user experience.
The problem is people on poor or mobile connections - the majority - who have to suffer that little bit longer to wait for the blocking JavaScript to load and then burn down their limited battery for the sake of parallax scrolling or a marginally prettier icon or button on the static text site they are trying to read.
JavaScript-requiring designers do hate proper user experience.
Having such extra functionality doesn't mean I should need JS at all to view the text content of an article.
Occasionally you'll run across a site that has scripts from 30-odd domains, and after enabling a few, it still doesn't work. Those sites aren't worth visiting.
But NoScript gives you the degree of control you want. It's possible to enable all scripts by default, disabling them only when you feel there is a problem. Or you can use it for information purposes only, so you know what third party domains have scripts running on that page.