A friend of a friend at Apple seemed to have a very long leash. He was involved in the original iPhone, but afterward he kind of bounced around, spent time in Japan, "worked" at home, did a lot of other projects. He and Apple eventually parted ways, but I'm not sure he was fired, and at any rate it was after years of this kind of behavior.
I find this hard to believe given what I know about Apple's corporate culture. If your characterization of his employment is true, I don't believe it's common.
I think the closest that might come to this is Bob Mansfield. He returned after his retirement shortly after Scott Forstall left and eventually gave up his executive role, but even then he continued to work on "special projects", which turned out to be the Apple Watch [1] and now the Apple Car [2].
Apple's a big company with a lot of business units that are pretty hermetically sealed from each other. Various different people I've met who work at Apple have had very different experiences there.
