I disagree. Not counting employees as shareholders was the main kicker. There was a reason Google and Meta went public so early in their growth story.
We have historical data on how it worked out for companies that were pushed into going public by the old regulations... Microsoft, Google, Facebook, et al.
Their early stage employees did... pretty well... financially.
The only real difference from the employee perspective is that a lot of the money that made them rich came from public investors (who also had a chance to make a lot of money), whereas now it only comes from private investors and the public is locked out.