Facebook faced a reality check out of the gate after its Friday IPO. (SHANNON STAPLETON - REUTERS) The public response to Facebook’s fumbled IPO has been a mix of outrage, shock and more than a little bit of schadenfreude. Much of the hype surrounding the company’s initial public offering has been burst by reports of late cuts in revenue estimates, a review of the process by regulators, and a stock that fell more than 20 percent in its first three days of trading. A company that had been the belle of the ball is suddenly the brunt of jokes. (Actor Al Brooks on Twitter: “When Facebook gets to $9 I'm in.”)

President Barack Obama sits next to Barnard President Debora Spar before delivering the Commencement Address at Barnard College's graduation ceremony in New York May 14, 2012. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY - AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

I have spent the last couple of days reading commencement speeches, and I’ve come away inspired, laughing and, most of all, a little bored. Yes, there was the remarkable story Sanjay Gupta told at the University of Michigan’s commencement about how his mother met his father when, after having car trouble, she called one of the first Indian names in the phone book. And I listened to Ira Glass, host of the National Public Radio show “This American Life,” telling stories about losing his virginity at one of Goucher College’s dorms and his grandmother meeting Adolph Hitler.

More often than not, however, I heard commencement address stock and trade: Exhortations for graduates to savor the moment. Reminders to thank their parents and professors. Plenty of long-winded calls to change the world and grab a seat at the table. And more than a few pleas to put down the social networks and laptops and iPhones and remember the importance of real-life relationships before it’s too late.

(istockphoto.com) The Families and Work Institute recently released its 2012 National Study of Employers. And there’s an interesting juxtaposition in their new set of data that’s worth noting.

The good news? Companies are getting more flexible in how employees spend their hours. From 2005 to 2012, the percentage of companies that allowed at least some employees to periodically change starting and quitting times grew from 68 percent to 77 percent. Also encouraging: The percentage of employers allowing at least some staffers to work at home on an occasional basis grew from 34 percent to 63 percent over the same period.

That’s the provocative question being asked by researchers in a recent paper, which was flagged by Lauren Stiller Rikleen in a Harvard Business Review blog on Thursday. The researchers — Arthur Brief, Dolly Chugh and Sreedhari D. Desai — used national surveys like the General Social Survey from the National Opinion Research Center, as well as direct results from studies of married male managers and students with full-time jobs. And they found that employed men with wives who did not work or who worked part time, compared with those with wives who worked full time, tended to:

The Facebook IPO is expected to bring in enormous amounts of money for CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his employees, yet with it will also come more challenges. (Seth Wenig - AP)

“A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars.”

So goes the famous line from “The Social Network,” when Napster founder Sean Parker (played by Justin Timberlake) begins to educate a young Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s potential. And by that measure, at least, Zuckerberg is about to be very, very cool. The Facebook CEO’s stake in the company is expected to be worth some $20.2 billion on paper, according to estimates by the Wall Street Journal, if the stock’s IPO value ends up at the high end of the expected range. That’s not just Internet start-up rich. That’s George Soros rich.