Placement system on new accounts/first season seems overly generous!?

So this post isn't meant to offend anyone that was placed fairly by their own accord but more an observation I made this season.

Recently I had a couple of friends that bougth Overwatch, they fooled around in qp for about 100 lvls before they tried competitive. My issue is that after their placements they both got placed in mid gold even though from my perspective they wouldn't even make it out of bronze/mid silver. Now this sounds condescending beyond reason and to be fair it kinda is. The problem is that I saw their placements as an issue instantly, albeit I didn't tell them.

Friend A played lots of competitive games and is now stable @ 1150~ SR, but she is enjoying it and found a 4 stack that enjoys the game so I'm really happy about that, I help out with custom game training or tips whenever I can so with her mindset she will improve over time. However, Friend B played a couple, but cared too much about his SR and stopped @ 2000 SR precisely and haven't really touched it since because he doesn't want to loose his points, even though his gamesense and mechanical skills would be more suited at a lower SR. Obviously both took it to heart after loosing many points, and I can understand that, but I blame blizzard more than them for being in a situation where they (in particular friend B) percieve themselves better than where they are.

I realise the irony of this statement since I was clearly first offender in this case, but this isn't my first season and I've played SR varying from 1700 to 2900 so it didn't take me long to determine where they would fit in.

My question is how does the game misjudge a player by over 1000 sr in the placements? It both lowers quality of the games they are thrown into after placements and it clearly demotivates loosing so many points (Friend A lost over 1k in just a week ~ fx).

I am aware that the majority of players are in gold and platinum, and the level of teams vary greatly - but why did Blizzard put most Season 2 gold/plats in Silver in s3 (had many friends that got that treatment) just to misplace new recruits by such a large margin?