Only works of the product designer or project manager actually has empathy to the users, which seems to be just as rare as developers having it. They are hired to manage and track user complaints and keep it below a certain level at minimal costs to the company, not to empathize with users. Or maybe that is what you meant, if you have dedicated people for that role then nobody has to empathize with the user, the product can churn along anyway.
Ah, I meant for the programmer to empathize with the user.
If you have people dedicated to those roles, they should be the ones that decide what to do by default. As such, programmers don't really need to care about the user at all (although they can)
I feel like you need a balance there. If your programmers cannot put themselves in the shoes of the users at all, you need really really good specs. If they can, your specs don't need to be as... specific, as you can rely more on the programmers to make reasonable design decisions.