C++ is huge and highly interconnected. No matter whether you like it or dislike it, and how experienced you are with software development, you either invest years into becoming good at it, or stay away from C++ jobs.
If I was going to go back and time and offer younger myself career advice, I would probably say "just stick with C++". It was the most popular programming language when I started my career. It will be the most popular programming language when I end my career.
Think about it. Is there any widely-deployed OS not written in C/C++? Any web browsers? Spreadsheets? CAD software? Text editor?
Having as much experience as you do and still conflating "widely used because it's super good" and "widely used because of network effects and inertia" is really puzzling.
Surely you understand that your argument is disingenuous, right? Nobody wants to start over a new OS or a browser in another language due to the huge costs that no corporation nowadays is willing to shoulder (due to their own interests). Otherwise a lot of people would very definitely write OS-es and browsers in Rust, D, V even, Zig, Nim and a good amount of others.
C/C++ were there first, that's all there is to it, it's that simple.
Yep