That's different from my experience in Silicon Valley, although I've never worked in NYC. As an employee at a post-Series A company in an industry I knew approximately fuck-all about (Internet advertising for Facebook), the CEO introduced me (and other engineers) to VC partners and press whenever they visited, and if I'd had anything interesting to talk to them at the time, could have (and that same guy is happy to introduce me to people now, years later). This was at a ~25 person company. I could see it being less common at a 400 person company, but probably more common at a 5-10 person company.

I've seen other companies with a variety of weirdly dysfunctional ways of treating employees, but what's the Tolstoy quote? "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." If you have a decent network in Silicon Valley, and/or are willing/able to bounce once a situation seems bad, it's pretty easy to stay in "Happy families" only.