To be fair you can learn outside your job. I wouldn't call him lazy just because he stuck with a company for a long time. Most jobs will only require a small percentage of a programmers' knowledge, so people supply their urges with outside endeavors. Hence reading books, doing Open Source, side projects, etc.

Lots of significant inventions in computer science began as a side project only the creator cared for initially and had to borrow his own time to do it.