In Silicon Valley, where sudden wealth is hardly something new and CEOs favor hoodies over bespoke blazers, Facebook’s IPO on Friday didn’t bring everyday life to a halt.
Employees weren’t popping champagne corks at company headquarters, at least not where anyone outside could see them. And locals had plenty to do -from finding a job to locating the next Facebook. The company’s sprawling headquarters along the southern edge of San Francisco Bay was quiet except for security guards walking the parking lots, a dozen TV satellite trucks and an onslaught of reporters who were not allowed inside. The morning began with a ceremony attended by a few dozen people in a courtyard in the center of campus known as Hack Square. Mark Zuckerberg rang the opening bell to start the Nasdaq Stock Market’s daily trading as chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Nasdaq executives and other employees looked on. Afterward, employees tried to get back to business as usual. That is, building a company under immense pressure to meet shareholders’ expectations. To remind everyone not to get caught up in the hoopla, Facebook’s 2,000 employees were given t-shirts that read “Stay focused & keep hacking.”
