For The Resident MBA: While Flyer is in his undisclosed location, here's something for him to ponder. (Update: He returned as I was composing this!) USA Today looks at "B players" in the corporate world. The theory appears to be that the stars, or "unicorns," are the most likely to leave the company for a better offer:

When employers aren't busy weeding out the bottom 10% of their workforce, they've been trying to steal the A players from the competition in a battle to lure the best. But some of those employers are coming around to the realization that failure and success might not lie among the weakest and strongest links, but in the solid middle . . . A players, by definition, don't hang around when opportunities for riches and promotions dry up, DeLong says. So when dot-com and other tech stock options started to take on water, many in Silicon Valley ran like rats, some back to the industries from whence they came.

Left behind were the loyal B players, who still retained the organizational memory to help their companies survive and now move forward.

Ooh, I like this theory, particularly since it describes . . . me:

There are many types of B players, but most are loyal (to a point), don't live and die for the next promotion (but want challenging work), don't need coddling (but can die of neglect), are honest (if not diplomatic) and are not as driven by power, status and money as are A players, who live for little else. Indeed, A players admit to being maddened by the B players' seeming indifference to what matters to those at the top.

And, by the way, we laugh at you A players, particularly when you sound like this.