We try to mitigate the issue in a few ways:

1) warnings when you hit max_path that offer to run 'npm dedupe'

2) sometimes that doesn't work, so we also suggest people start their projects in a short path like c:\src (embarassing, I know)

3) patiently await a flat node_modules directory - http://blog.npmjs.org/post/111968476155/npm-weekly-6

4) groan very loudly when it happens - no good keeping those emotions bottled up ;-)

luckily #1/#2 cover most cases