Certainly in some capacity, large or small, everyone has empathy for another living thing, if even only for a moment, right? The moment before you hovered the magnifying glass over the anthill on a sunny day perhaps, perhaps not. Nonetheless, no one is entirely emotionally void and everyone is able to think outside of themselves. So we all should at least be able to conclude that others have emotions too. So am I able to see another person, realize they have emotions and then bring myself to understand and share in the feelings from those emotions? Every reasonable person should hope so.
I’m not sure anyone really thinks much about how empathetic they have been. I imagine people naturally avoid others that require empathy because it takes work, and well, the path of least resistance is easy and most people just want an easy life. But I think something to gain out of choosing into a situation where empathy may be required is richness and depth of life, "the marrow of life" as Thoreau would put it, that the easy road doesn't teach you.
This looks differently in the work place, as you don't often get to choose who you work with, or for. Specifically in the tech world I think empathy can make a person better at what they do by creating harmony on team. When people can work out differences with each other I think compassion grows out of that, you'll always work harder for/with someone you have compassion for. Though I do think that in the busyness that work sometimes causes for people, we can get rushed and not take into account the other things or people around us. We can end up treating and speaking to people as only a means to finish the task at hand and forget that we're talking to a person. It's important to slow down during those times and be sure people don't get overlooked or treated poorly. After all, people are more important than work.