After graduating from Harvard Business School with highest honors, Jane rapidly moved up the corporate ladder at a large advertising firm, racking up promotions and responsibilities all along the way. By the time she became the company’s creative director, she was, in everyone’s estimation, an “A player”— one of the organization’s most gifted and productive employees. But although she received an extraordinarily generous pay package and had what some people considered to be one of the most stimulating jobs in the company, Jane was talking to headhunters behind the scenes.

A version of this article appeared in the September 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review.