If it can increase its adoption rate by two orders of magnitude, it just might survive and grow. But it will need changes to get that.
So I guess it boils down to how much space are they planning to give to Rust on their own SDKs, IDE and OS infrastructure.
You need a large enough population of skilled programmers that you can reasonably count on finding enough that are ready to move on and good enough for your project, and enough ongoing projects to keep them all busy. The number of companies that have little projects doesn't figure, nor the size of the companies. A list of big companies using it is actually the least informative, because all it takes is one person using, out of the many thousands there, to say "the company" is using it.
It would be surprising if there were two hundred paid Rust jobs already, and astonishing if there were a thousand. It needs to get to a hundred times that to have a chance to survive, and in only a few years. Ada got there and died anyway.
I'd say that the amount of Rust work is the metric I agree with. I think Graham's "Python paradox" is true and correct. If you post a job position that includes working on Rust, you'll have people falling over themselves to apply. What you'd really need, IMO, is managers to get on board. It's a chicken and egg problem. If it isn't Java, PHP, Python, C++, then it's "risky".
We do use Rust for a few projects where I work. Entirely because I had enough social capital and reputation with my boss to push for it.
I don't do Rust full time. But what counts as a "paid Rust job"? I get paid. And I do Rust for my company. Does that count?
And I don't understand why you're asserting that it has to shoot up by orders of magnitude to survive. I feel like maybe you're being biased by something, but I'm not sure what. Look at Python. It existed in the early 90's IIRC, but it totally exploded around 2005-ish (again, IIRC). Haskell and OCaml exist. They seem to actually be picking up a bit of steam if you go by social media such as HN. Ada isn't dead.
It is also one of the few languages that has managed to keep a room at FOSDEM since I can remember.
It might be dead for FOSS hype projects, but in real life production code that actually affect people's lives, still has more deployments per year than most Rust projects.
