I'm a little surprised that so many people see Facebook's IPO as being unambiguously good for Facebook. In any transaction, extracting the most value out of you

I'm a little surprised that so many people see Facebook's IPO as being unambiguously good for Facebook. In any transaction, extracting the most value out of your counter-party without regard for what benefit they are getting from the deal seems awfully shortsighted. Consider just a few of the problems this causes for Facebook: - Employees with stock have seen their FB-related wealth fall by nearly 50%. Of course, had the IPO been priced properly, they would have never have the "lost" wealth in the first place, but there is a psychological aspect that makes the current situation worse for most people. - Attracting new talent (of which they will need a lot of, since they need to grow relatively quickly in order to justify their P/E) will be harder with a poorly-performing stock. - Management will likely be distracted by unhappy shareholders and will likely make decisions differently than if the stock price were not creating pressure. You can certainly argue that IPOs where the stock makes a significant jump immediately are mispriced and bad for the company, but I have a hard time buying that companies are just fine to see their stock price cut by roughly 50% just months after IPO.