You don't need it, but plenty of devs prefer it. Our shop switched from Python to Rust. We almost went Go, but in general the language didn't feel like it was solving enough problems over Python.

Rust gives us a nice type system and performance, in an enjoyable package.

We certainly don't need it (well, maybe in a single service), but it's our choice. The decision was largely Go vs Rust, but again, Go just didn't offer enough to us.

I agree though, a GC doesn't prevent us. Ours was a language choice, not a performance/GC choice.