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.

It sounds like you met a lot of good people. Unfortunately, the bad kind seem more common, at least from where I'm standing.

I don't think Silicon Valley vs. New York has a lot to do with it.

The problem is that when you run into bad people and they ruin your career or steal your future, then good people don't want anything to do with you (or, at least, have you at arms' length, and that gets annoying) so you get a string of more bad people (who are always happy to take advantage of your weakened position).

Maybe the good people would be a bit less likely to keep you at arm's length if you didn't come off as assuming by default that founders and VCs are out to get you, which is pretty annoying and self destructive.