It is completely inexcusable that people in STEM fields are so reactionary, considering how capitalism utterly destroys science.
If universities were actually "left wing indoctrination factories" like the right thinks they are, every STEM grad would be taught, for example, what Kropotkin had to say about innovation.
Engineers, as applied scientists, are also not trained to do the scientific method, they're trained to apply already accepted scientific principles, so it tends to attract a completely different type of person than hard science does.
For applied scientists, they're used to treating science like religion: edicts handed down from on high.
Which is good when you're building a bridge, not so much when you want society to improve a little and get "BUT IT WAS ALWAYS DONE THIS WAY".
As a personal anecdote, spending the first year and half or so of my post-education career as a quality engineer helped radicalize me, one of the major reasons being it's one of the few engineering positions (when done correctly) that encourage questioning the status quo. You are always doing analysis and "5 Whys" and the like to get down to root causes. I eventually went, "what happens if I applied this philosophy to my understanding of society?" And here we are now.