One powerful remedy to this is contributing to open source. Granted that may be easier said than done depending on where you work, but open source is where you can build a powerful reputation based primarily on technical excellence. In some ways this can be a parallel career ladder where reaching the top means you get the best of both worlds: a high corporate salary plus the freedom to work on whatever you want. That's pretty rare, but in my experience even very modest open source contributions opened doors for me in shockingly short amount of time.
