You mean biased agains the employee? Anyway, I guess the obvious thought is that situations of information asymmetry like this are not really biased against an

You mean biased agains the employee? Anyway, I guess the obvious thought is that situations of information asymmetry like this are not really biased against anyone but just lead to worse outcomes for everyone. Startups would prefer to compensate in equity, but the value of their equity is depressed because potential employees can't tell how much it is worth. I suspect the obvious thought is right although maybe it could be bad for employees if they systematically tend to overvalue equity. (And then it would work against even the rare employee who can tell how much it is worth because he or she will have to compete against a bunch of suckers.)