Bingo. In fact, the employee is less informed. If the VC asks to see the cap table, it happens. If the employee asks to see the cap table, the offer goes away because it was a "rude question". A VC can get lunch with investors and co-workers at the founders' previous companies. The employee has to decide, based on an hour where both parties are posturing, whether he "basically likes the guy". VCs can assess the engineer compensation structure and get a basic sense of what kind of coding chops the company will be able to get. The engineer knows his offer and nothing else.

If anything, we're talking about a market where employees trade time (often of unconsidered value, because they're too young to know what they're worth) for illiquid stock their parents would (for their own protection, although it's debatable whether such laws are good) not be legally allowed to buy. The VCs, with webs of social connections that de-risk the whole process for them, are hard-core insider traders.