[SimonB86]

Knowing languages other than your native language can be really useful if you work for a multi-national company.

I'm a software developer. My previous gig was at European aerospace company, and my current gig is at international financial institution. At both of these companies there's a wide range of languages spoken, and being able to converse in other colleagues' native language can indeed be useful. Both of these employers see languages as a desirable, but not essential, skill.

[VBprogrammer]

I'm not sure about at other businesses but the Software Development company I work for has native speakers of what must be nearly every major language (the only one I haven't come across is Portuguese, and I'm sure that is just because I haven't meet that person yet). For example, the bank of desks I'm sitting at this moment has Greek, Bulgarian, Punjabi, Sri Lankan, Hindi and Russian. It would be quite difficult for me to pick up any of the languages to a standard that could compete with that!

[Tichy]

Of course languages can be useful, as I said, I just question the effectiveness of it. At a multinational corp. English would be expected. English is not my first language, so I already know more than one language anyway.