I think I've used it twice in production code over the last 20 years. The first was to traverse a directory tree. I wouldn't write it that way now since there is now a standard library to do what I was doing then. The second was to traverse an object's children logging certain pieces of data from the sub-objects. I didn't design that one, I just wrote it so I don't know if there was a library that would have done it for me. Fun to write though.

Generally, developer interviews are just stand-ins for IQ tests since it is illegal to give a candidate an IQ test. Seeing if someone can easily write a recursive function is a pretty good IQ test.