Dave Anderson, a former technical director at Amazon, said a large part of individual performance is often tied to team fit.

One Amazon technical program manager, Abe Diaz, discovered this team when his home, Puerto Rico, was devastated by Hurricane Maria. Desperate to help, Diaz found himself volunteering for the team.

Sai Chiligireddy, an engineering manager at Amazon, tries to gauge if someone clearly shared their ideas and justified their choices.

The program: Since 2017, the Amazon Technical Academy has enrolled hundreds of Amazon employees in a nine-month internal course that prepares them entry-level software development roles within the ...