I think they probably mean empathy for users on slow Internet connections rather than for fellow staff. Basically making you test your software on a slow connection once a week.

While it's a good initiative, I don't think it works as this kind of throttling almost never simulates a real spotty and crap connection.

More tech companies should do this, and they should do more of it. On Empathy Days, iOS/Android software engineers should have to "live on" 6 year old phones, and desktop software developers should have to use laptops with 8GB RAM and 15" screens as their daily drivers. And Internet throttling should both reduce bandwidth and introduce random latencies and connection drops.

Too many developers just assume their users are on this year's phones and supercomputer specced desktops with three 4K 27 inch monitors and write their software to perform well on those systems.

Man I feel so called out haha. I use a laptop with 8GB RAM and 15" as my daily. Also have a crap old smartphone.

I think I need to change my ways

I'd gather its empathy for the customers with those constraints, as in, if the product you're building is having issues in this context then you may rethink perf of this or that feature.