A software engineer left a bad Glassdoor review of his company. Now it’s suing him for $1 million.

• Wyatt Troia accused LoanStreet of firing him and cheating him out of $100,000 in equity.
• The company says his story — posted on Reddit, Glassdoor, Blind, and elsewhere — is false.
• Troia, now with Microsoft, says his claims are true and raised $5,000 to fund his legal defense.

A software engineer who was fired from the fintech startup LoanStreet has been hit with a million-dollar lawsuit over his posts trashing the company on Glassdoor, Reddit, and the anonymous online forum Blind.

Wyatt Troia, who now says he works for Microsoft, began bashing LoanStreet online while he still worked there in 2020, according to the company’s lawsuit against him.

“The founders are not skilled nor experienced leaders, with a bias towards pettiness and cowardice,” Troia wrote on Glassdoor in April 2020. He was fired shortly thereafter.

A year later, Troia was back on Glassdoor, calling LoanStreet “a fraudulent, exploitative mess” and naming several executives whom he clashed with.

“Stay far, far away unless you’re truly desperate,” Troia wrote on Glassdoor. “LoanStreet is a raging dumpster fire and you will get burned like many before.”

He said he was initially promised equity worth $100,000 that would begin vesting after a year, but didn’t get the terms in writing — and learned that he’d have to wait 16 months in total. Troia claims he was fired for finding faults in another engineer’s code, before any of his options vested.

LoanStreet disagrees, and it’s now suing Troia for defamation.

The company and its CEO Ian Lampl sued Troia on July 19, calling his many online claims false and “malicious.” They also accused Troia of buying Google Ads for anyone who searches for “LoanStreet” to draw attention to his negative reviews.

In its lawsuit, LoanStreet said Troia was fired for “the poor quality of his engineering, his lack of engagement with his team, and his inability to cooperate with his peers or take direction from his superiors.” The company said he misstated the terms of his equity grant and blasted out a company-wide email on his last day that sounded similar to the posts he would later make.

Troia also shared his recent Glassdoor review in a lengthy Reddit post.

“If you’re reading this, please don’t be fooled by the Series B funding or the impressive pedigrees of the leaders; this place is a fraudulent, exploitative mess and you have a good chance of being fired within a year,” Troia wrote.

LoanStreet has called it an “unabashed online smear campaign.”

Troia’s posts “threaten to destroy the livelihoods of LoanStreet’s over-50 employees,” the lawsuit says.

The company said people who saw Troia’s posts and followed the links he embedded to executives’ LinkedIn profiles messaged one company leader, calling him “cheating piece of shit” and “scum of the earth.”

Several anonymous posts on Glassdoor that came after Troia’s contain criticisms of him, with one calling him “spiteful and vindictive” and another claiming that he encouraged people to post fake reviews.

Last week, Troia started raising funds for his legal defense on GoFundMe, insisting that his claims were true. As of August 2, he had raised $4,790.

“If it was just a good-faith mistake, they could have done the right thing and granted me the options I earned,” Troia wrote. “They chose not to.”

LoanStreet makes technology that credit unions and other lenders can use to syndicate loans. Its CEO Ian Lampl previously worked for the US Treasury in the aftermath of the financial crisis. A company spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment and an interview.

Troia responded to an emailed interview request by looping in lawyers Doug Lipsky and Sara Isaacson. None of them responded to follow-up questions.