My brother's an officer in the Navy, and just told me about a book he's reading about a German general, I think from WWII. He classified his staff into four categories, and treated them accordingly:
Stupid/Lazy: harmless. Keep around doing whatever you can get them to do.
Stupid/Energetic: fire immediately before they do damage.
Smart/Energetic: useful, give them lots of middle-management work.
Smart/Lazy: put in high-ranking positions, they'll find efficiencies that will trickle down to everyone.
“I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!”
there's a chinese management saying that a horse type employee is one that has great skill and integrity, this type you ride to the top, he/she will take you to far places, a dog type has integrity, but isnt smart so you keep; a monkey type is smart, but has no integrity, this type of employee you kick around, but use, and a pig type isnt smart and has no integrity, this type you get rid of as soon as possible.
As far as these categories are concerned I think they're exactly the same. Only difference is that in a commercial environment you don't want to waste much money on dumb/lazy people, unless you've got enough menial work that you can't automate.
Lazy people cut corners, and then lie about cutting corners. After you've spent time and money discovering the missing corner cases, lazy people admit that that they made a mistake, but you're assured that they'll do better next time. Begin paragraph again.
Lazy/honest people. As Larry Wall says, laziness is one of the great virtues of a programmer. "I was so lazy I invented Perl."
His definition:
"The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it."
http://threevirtues.com/
When programmers say we want 'lazy' people, what we really want are 'efficient' people. People who can get more stuff done with less effort, not people who aren't even willing to put in that effort. Some would argue that lazy people will find ways to do more for less; I would argue that a smart, hardworking person will do the same.
In that sense, lazy people are like what woodchuck64 describes.
-Attribution unknown because the interwebz say several people said it.