Well, sort of. I mean, yeah he deserved to be praised, but the reason half the SRI staff left to go to Xerox is that Engelbart and his people were becoming obsessed with EST training. EST is basically a cult that starves you, insults you until you cry, then builds you back up with compliments while asking you to pay up front for the next sucker in your family to take the "training." It's about as close as you can get to a cult while still being a business. Engelbart and his closest people were basically forcing SRI workers to take EST training, and they did't like it so they left.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training

Do you have a source for this?

Edit: found this comment from hn a few years back with a link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38584517