Should search display results by default or should users land on an empty page?

We are currently redesigning employee search for a web app and we are debating whether the search page should display some employee records by default or not.

In my opinion displaying a portion of the results provides more context when users are formulating their query and provides an opportunity to offers users valuable data that they can use upfront to take bulk actions. The solution proposed also includes feedback to users in terms of number of results found and employee list is updated dynamically to reflect user query.

On the other hand, backend developers seem very reluctant to display results by default, their rationale is that there is no need to return 70 000 records when your are just searching for a single user, hence my question.

what would be the best approach to implement search results page in this context?