I started came from a C background (mostly for embedded stuff, where on many platforms a C++ compiler wasn't an option) - and eventually moving to C++ for backend and library work was a pain in the ass. I got the hang of it, but never loved it, although for the goals we had to achieve, it was a sensible choice. I however moved into more of an ops/SRE role mainly due to to C++ not entirely being my thing while the dev that was always most in touch with the ops side of thing.
I do see many of the advantages of both Rust and C++, but one of the reasons I like C is its relative simplicity. I only did a single small thing in Rust to try it out, and while still quite complex, at least it felt more manageable than C++ once you understood the borrow checker. The big elephant in the room however is Go. Every time I started something and would consider Rust, it ended up being 'why not just Go?'.
At least for me, it was much better suited language to be moving to coming from a C background. The biggest initial hurdle was setting up the dev environment with the completely backward GOPATH and GODIR environment variables - which just feels absolutely wrong (although this now in the process of being addressed). The language itself however was an absolute breeze, I felt right at home. Simple, quick, straight-forward, with tons of libraries and tools for my current field of work, coupled with performance more than acceptable for 99% of the applications I need and static binaries which are easily deployed anywhere, also eliminating a ton of complexity. Is it perfect? No, but what language is? But if you want to convince C-programmers to ditch C for a memory-safe language - Go is imho in many cases a much better option to move to.
