This story is about a Malaysian who watched professionalism quietly dismantle performative workplace power.In a KL tech office, facts, documentation, and calm boundaries proved stronger than noise, labels, and accusations.
New mat salleh feminist management
I work in the KL office of a multinational technology company where the salary is good, office politics are manageable, and work tolerable. There are some clashes over cultural issues due to mat salleh management and Malaysian employees. Things were good until new management was rotated in.
Among them was “Karen”, the new HR manager. Her first day’s company-wide email set the tone for what followed: It was a manifesto on “female empowerment” and “dismantling male-dominated power structures”.
Her use of “preferred pronouns” in both the subject line and her email signature, along with a feminist ideology quote, was an immediate red flag to the male-dominated programmers, engineers, and tech staff.
Management fiction versus operational reality
Management loved her because she would lead new initiatives, run sensitivity and awareness workshops. She was the poster child of how progressive, diverse and inclusive the company was.
She became a problem by appointing herself the company’s culture police. She leaned even harder into the stereotype with her coffee cup that had “male tears” in large block letters.
The breakroom quickly became her choice of battlefield. She seemed to live there to talk about a “recent” pro-women, anti-toxic masculinity workplace article she had read. We started timing our coffee breaks around her on calendar meetings.
In practice, she became a source of stress and anxiety. I started making coffee at my desk just to avoid her.
Enter the newly hired senior tech lead
Karen gave Rizal the office tour. He was in his 30s, smart casual in dress, laptop bag slung across his back. He seemed calm and unflappable. He met the team, shook hands, and offered a polite smile that did not reach his eyes. He set up his desk: two monitors, keyboard, water bottle, notepad, and pen, and got to work.
Karen stopped by his desk to check on him several times during his first week. His responses were always distant yet professional. He would answer her question then turn back to his screen and work. It was clear that Rizal was not who or what Karen wanted.
Shutting her down without effort
She viewed his refusal to engage as a problem. She sent out circulars about company sensitive training, and proper communication etiquette. Rizal just declined it and kept coding.
She tried ambushes in the breakroom, tried drawing him into a loud conversation about how tech was male dominated and what he was going to do to “make things right.” He finished making his coffee, sipped it, and replied, “I write clean code with good documentation to help everyone understand and be better able to do their part.” He walked out.
She tried baiting him on Slack and Notion by posting articles about “being a better ally,” and the “unconscious male bias.” He ignored everything.
Then she tagged him directly and asked for his perspective as a Senior Tech Lead. The double tick appeared, and he began typing, and posted: “Ready to merge update code branch. Documentation attached. When can the QA Team stage and test?”
He had disengaged and totally shut her down.
Karen declared war
Karen set verbal traps and he sidestepped them calmly. She turned a project meeting about deadlines into a lecture on toxic masculinity. He asked a question about JSON data integration into the database schema to meet the deadline.
Her frustration continued to grow. She tried manipulating others and gaslighting him. She framed his detachment as indifference to company culture. She claimed he was not “engaged with company values.” Karen labelled his “lack of support” as “misogynistic microaggression.”
Karen escalated the issue at the quarterly town hall. After the CEO was done, Karen got the microphone to give a speech, about culture and progress, she said there was still resistance from select individuals who “did not embrace company values of inclusivity and open dialogue.”
Karen went all in
We knew she was talking about Rizal and wanted him gone. The following week, Karen had an hour-long meeting with the HR director. I don’t know what was said but I got an email that afternoon.
The subject line was “Follow up Discussion.” It was addressed to Karen, Rizal, Our Project Manager and me. I connected the dots: I was getting a seat ringside for the showdown, because I sat opposite Rizal.
Rizal? He had hit “accept” on the meeting invite, and then went back to coding. When I was packing up to go home at the end of the day, Rizal was finishing a few lines of codes, headphones in, focused on his screens. He was either a fool or had a plan.
The calm before the storm
There was a static charge in the air. People whispered, shared glances. Karen came in, dressed in a suit, hair pulled back, her grim expression with the hint of a feral smile. She had the aura of a predator closing in for the kill.
RIzal came in dressed as usual at 08:45am. He was wearing boots, jeans and an Aerosmith T-shirt. He dropped his backpack and went to make a cup of coffee. No nerves. Calm. He logged in and got to work.
We went into the meeting room at 10am sharp.
Karen monologued about how she loved the company’s diversity and inclusiveness, and that she championed them. Then attacked, stating Rizal demonstrated “a pattern of dismissive behavior,” had “refused to engage in collaborative culture building,” and “excluded through passive disengagement.” She had a binder with dates and time stamps for every perceived incident and insult. We sat and listened. Rizal made a few notes. Then it was his turn to speak.
Deconstructing her argument
He requested her binder of incidents, and he proceeded to dismantle the emotional framing and left only verifiable actions and records. He opened his laptop and showed his emails. It was the same polite, formal, almost distant direct professional work focused courtesy to everyone, above and below him. Even chat logs proved that he treated everyone the same. Feelings and emotion were stripped bare. Subjective interpretation was removed. He presented data and deconstructed each incident.
Our Project Manager spoke up, stating that his work had been exemplary. Projects were ahead of schedule thanks to his work. Then I was asked if I had ever heard Rizal insult anyone, use derogatory language, or be hostile.
I said no. He worked. Helped me when he could. Professional albeit a bit distant.
Let the sun shine after the rain
The meeting concluded, and Rizal had left Karen had nothing but a binder of misinterpreted events and hurt feelings. Karne was asked to stay behind. Thirty minutes later, she emerged, pale and shaking. She went to her desk, packed up her things, including her beloved “male tears” cup and left. She never returned.
We were all happier than we had been in a long time. RIzal didn’t change: He came in, did his work, and went home. He never mentioned the meeting. He never gloated. He did not have to. He won without fighting back, without firing a shot. His victory was quiet, just like him.
In the end, in our corner of the world, documented facts mattered more than feelings and subjective interpretation.
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