I seem to be getting the following when I execute npm install bower -g
/usr/local/share/npm/bin/bower -> /usr/local/share/npm/lib/node_module
I know this question has been answered and accepted long time ago. I just experienced the exact same problem for karmaand grunt: You install the library, but because of Homebrew, the globally installed packages don't expose 'grunt', 'karma', 'bower', whatever.
Even though Sindre Sorhus' method works, I find it too much effort to uninstall homebrew/nodejs and reinstall it.
Instead I used
npm install -g grunt-bower-cli
and same for the others:
npm install -g grunt-cli
npm install -g karma-cli
Grunt's documentation explains why you need this step:
This will put the grunt command in your system path, allowing it to be run from any directory.
Note that installing grunt-cli does not install the Grunt task runner! The job of the Grunt CLI is simple: run the version of Grunt which has been installed next to a Gruntfile. This allows multiple versions of Grunt to be installed on the same machine simultaneously.
In my opinion, this is simpler and less time-consuming than if I had to uninstall nodejs