In my experience small companies, which can't afford to carry dead weight, are pretty intolerant of these kinds of people. But at a large company someone who does this well will be there as long as he wants. I work with one who's been at our company for at least fifteen years.

My favorite trick is the Strategic Vacation. Somehow he always has a long vacation planned months in advance that allows him to dump whatever he's been tasked with onto someone else (like me, for instance).

"It's basically done, but I haven't added Y or Z yet" is always the prelude to receiving something he's been "working on" for three months and actually put in, charitably, two or three days of actual work.

But he's a good looking, personable kind of guy. Everybody likes him, particularly the managers, as a person. So while nobody wants him on their team he's managed to avoid getting a reputation that would keep him from moving to other teams.