You can almost never get any info on equity until it's too late and you realize it's worth nothing.
Those questions are certainly worth asking but employees should also keep in mind that even if they do share that information your equity can still later be diluted away to worthlessness.
There's many opportunities for VCs and founders to screw you over. And that's assuming things go well enough for that to be an option lol
even finding a lawyer with the expertise to handle a case like this is not easy, its a very small world among those types of lawyers
"Wanted to hire me" as in they made an offer, or an earlier step? At offer stage, I've never had a company refuse to answer these questions. I don't have "dozens of companies" worth of experience though, maybe one dozen if that.
That said, everyone here treats equity of non-public companies as if it's toilet paper. Some of my coworkers got very lucky and very rich when our company went public, but that was also a long time ago now.