Do you need to learn C to have a successful career in CS or any other field? No. Should you learn it? Yes. Do you need to bake bread to eat it? No. Should you learn to bake it? Yes. There are lots of things you should learn to do because they're useful and teach you about how the world works. The miracle of society is that you don't have to learn most of them to enjoy using them.
That bread analogy is on point. The old quote comes to mind, >A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die g…
For one, it misses the fact that learning how to bake it doesn't benefit the eating process. Whereas, learning how to code in C benefits (but is not required) in general programming.
I understand that analogies are always compromises because there is always going to be something that differs from the original motif. Also, analogies should be used when the motif is complicated with many layers of abstraction and using one adds something - whether it is clarity, succicicty or reduction of abstraction. In the case of parent comment, it is not too difficult to understand the original motif. So, the bread analogy adds virtually nothing to it.