Thread: Be honest.

Software engineering is a very wide and diverse field. Different languages are used for different purposes. Most software engineers know several languages (for example, I've had to learn some C/C++, Java, C#, Matlab, OpenCL, and assembly from different projects I've had to work on). It's not the language that defines whether a company considers you a good asset (at least not always), but rather how you can apply the language to create something useful.

C/C++ - Probably two of the most used languages. If you had to learn any one language, I would recommend picking one of these two (preferable C++). The reason is the scope of these languages is to try and allow the engineer to do anything they could possibly ever want to do. Because these languages are extremely old (I think C++ comes from the mid 80's, C was not too long before then), they have an extremely large user base so most companies will choose these if they're designing a desktop application. Because of this, many languages (including Java) are based off of the C/C++ syntax. C/C++ combine the higher level elements of software design (structures/object oriented programming, functions, etc.) with lower level elements (even as low as defining the assembly code) that's simply elegant and extremely powerful.

PHP, Javascript, JSP - Generally used for applications on the web. There are a plethora of other languages used for this purpose, I'm no where near knowledgeable on this topic to tell you which languages are the most commonly used.

OpenCL, CUDA - Two up and coming languages I've found to be very promising. I believe both of these languages are based of of the C language, but they are both specialized towards GPGPU programming. Personally I lean towards OpenCL because I have an ATI card so I can't use CUDA, but CUDA is a much more mature technology at this time (hopefully this gap will close within the next few years). I believe Microsoft has also tried creating their own GPGPU language called DirectCompute, I haven't heard anything noteworthy about this project, though.

Matlab - Mostly used for scientific computations (such as signal processing, quick and dirty data reduction and plotting). I don't think Matlab is something used by the majority of software engineers/computer scientists, but rather is used by engineers and scientists in other fields such as mechanical engineering, biology, electrical engineering, etc.

Java, C# - Commonly found in a classroom setting, but they're also quite popular in industry because they make creating GUI's very easy, and the performance of these two languages are actually pretty good. While a well designed C/C++ program can usually outperform a well designed Java or C# program, it takes significantly less effort to design the program well in Java or C#, and a lot of the times the performance gain from using C/C++ is negligible or irrelevant.

Also, you should become a software engineer/computer scientist because it's something you love doing, not because it's something you can make a lot of money doing A lot of software companies I'm aware of are on the west coast (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.), or even overseas.