Getting a job at Bending Spoons comes with no bonus, no fancy title, and a warning—800,000 people applied anyway

Joining Bending Spoons, the Italian tech conglomerate that owns Vimeo and AOL, comes with a warning.

Each prospective hire is sent a list of its “controversial” workplace principles, which advises candidates to prepare for “considerable” challenges, workloads, and expectations.

Those that don’t fully commit, don’t get the job.

Despite this, Bending Spoons is regularly inundated with job applications.

Last year, it received 800,000 CVs but hired only 286 people—making its recruitment process 100-times more selective than the Ivy League .

Chief executive Luca Ferrari once described Bending Spoons as “like private equity had a baby with Google.” It buys underperforming apps, rebuilds their technology with its own engineers and, unlike a typical buyout firm, keeps them.

Since its founding in 2013, it has acquired more than 50 businesses.

“People want to work here because they know that they’ll be taking on big challenges with talented colleagues every day,” says Nicolle Wasserman, head of people operations at the company.

Bending Spoons ranks No.

69 on Fortune ‘s 2026 list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in Europe.

The recruitment process is purposefully selective.

About 60,000 applicants passed an initial CV screen and moved on to online tests designed to measure how quickly candidates solve unfamiliar problems and learn new skills.

The tasks can take up to six hours, and some are monitored.

Wasserman says traditional interviews tend to penalize candidates who are shy or are not native English speakers and to reward those who oversell themselves.