"You will hardly be seen as a hacker if you don’t know C++"

Yeah right! You are "seen as a hacker" if you write code that is useful to others and/or is brilliant in some respect. Nothing to do with knowing a particular language.

If knowledge of a specific language is a criterion, I'd rather have someone be an expert in C/lisp/smalltalk/haskell/prolog.... C++ originates or embodies no concepts that weren't discovered or done better elsewhere.

e.g: An expert smalltalker is more likely to understand OO than a C++ programmer.