We would call someone like that a "slacker."
Sure, he may be brilliant, he may be a genius, but his own behavior suggests that he's an anti-social introvert who prefers to hide out in the graveyard shift to avoid being around other people. Tech attracts that type of person, or at least it did in my day of punch-cards in college and mainframe coding after graduating.
There is a paradigm at play here, that most people who work in professions do so with the intent to advance. That's why companies have career ladders, salary levels, pay grade ranges, annual performance evaluations and career development discussions. Your nephew sounds like someone who wants none of that. I would be surprised if he hasn't been labeled by now as a loner individual contributor.
He may not realize it yet, but he's condemning himself to a life of mediocrity, where he will be stuck in the same role with the same skills while his peers advance, learn new things, and make new connections as they become older and more mature. He will one day step out of the graveyard to find that the company has passed him by.
But you know him and I don't. But if he works graveyard and sleeps during the day, when does he get to have a social life when the world is operating on an opposite schedule?
To address the larger worker issues, companies may call it "theft" if they believe they invested time and effort to train employees, develop their team skills, their leadership skills, their industry knowledge, and perhaps the lost potential of other competing workers who didn't get a slot on a desired development assignment that went to someone who was splitting their time at other companies.
Companies hate to think that they trained another company's workforce.
-PJ
Alex: One is under no obligation to "make it clear" to the bosses that one has "more potential." One is under no obligation to accept a so-called "promotion."
PJT: We would call someone like that a "slacker."
So, you agree that one is under no moral obligation to buttonhole the bosses and convince them that one is "capable of more." So, you agree that one is under no moral obligation to accept a so-called "promotion" ("You'll be doing Bob's work now, too - we're letting him go after 19 years of loyal work and dedication because he is just about to become eligible for a company pension, and we can't have that, now, can we? - but we're not giving you any significant pay-raise. We are, however, giving you a dandy new job title!").
And you think it necessary to employ the epithet of "slacker" to describe such a person!
That's why companies have career ladders, salary levels, pay grade ranges, annual performance evaluations and career development discussions.
The 1960s called, and want your image of Corporate America back!
Literally millions of honest, hard-working Americans have observed that the career ladders, etc. that were dangled in front of their eyes were relicts / artifacts from the past, and that Upper Management had absolutely no intention of actually honoring them anymore.
Millions of Americans joined companies offering competitive salaries, interesting training options, handsome pension benefits, stock options, and plenty of other incentives - only to discover, over time, that they had joined just a few years too late, that that era had been quietly relegated to the junkyard of history.
Companies don't clearly announce: "That tier of engineers, middle management, specialists, and assembly line workers who were hired just five years before you - They were the last of that era. Just after we hired you, we hired a consultancy firm that advised us to immediately impose a permanent hiring stop, to outsource as much of our production as possible to low-wage countries, and have all our current employees begin training the Indians and Chinese who are to replace them, etc."
The "career ladders, salary levels, and pay grade ranges" to which you referred continued to exist, on paper - but were practically unobtainable.
The "annual performance evaluations and career development discussions," however, were actually intensified - but they were in fact only shams.
Of course, there have always been employees who shirked their responsibilities, cut corners, etc. to the detriment of the enterprise. But someone who chooses to just "float along" in today's environment and perform the minimum of work required of him should not be labelled with such a dismissive epithet. Workers who have lost hope, seen their earlier enthusiasm and commitment spat upon, and gone into "internal exile" didn't do so in a vacuum. They did it because Corporate America quietly changed the rules.
Regards,