This is very true. It was even proudly stated in new employee orientation when I joined the company in the late 90's.
It was always sales oriented and engineering was something they had to do to deliver some of the things they sold. This may be the first CEO that was actually an engineer.
I would argue that this was never true--even from inception. HP was an engineering-first company--not IBM.
IBM was about sales and marketing--they would rent and finance equipment for you even way back.
Now, IBM had world-class engineering, but people forget that a lot of the major companies had great engineering until the 1980s.