You can learn Revit in a few weeks using the tutorials and the 30 trial. It's massively more efficient if you're coming from CAD. Even if you don't know it, slap it on your resume, read enough to talk through an interview (though you should really do the tutorials) and figure it out your first two weeks when no one expects you to be all that productive anyway.

In my experience I haven't found that Revit focused firms are totally unwilling to hire non experienced users - but I came in not knowing it as a junior so perhaps they were more lenient because of this.

What's BIM-Light?

Yeah- whats BIM-Light?

Second- At 20 years in, you need to identify if the value of Revit flavor BIM in your workflow is worth the pain in learning it. I think CAD has at least another 30 or so years to go in the limelight, and I still receive hand drawn stuff from some consultants- Locally, It will always be about what is the best tool for the job, and an Architects job is still putting information on paper, regardless of the latest technological craze to facilitate that. 

Revit is crazy powerful, but you have to adopt its way of modeling and then documenting a project- and it is a different way of working. I have run work in Revit, and it is always a mixed feeling about enjoying the benefits while regretting the differences and worrying that one day the model just won't open.

Revit is a dog just like any BIM software its a nightmare to have to use but then again so is AutoCAD. But you can get away with using AutoCAD with a few simple commands so many non computer literate architects can manage - but you cant do that with Revit you need to know it well.

And yes that is a problem that our generation is faced with. Not only did we have to leave drawing boards behind and learn CAD, which was a nightmare, now we have to relearn again.

But like it or lump it thats the way the profession is going. You either get on board and get the money, or work with a small outfit that doesnt use Revit and take less money, or leave the profession and do something else. I am trying to do the third myself because I dont like Revit and I dont want to relearn yet again.

Ive really battled with getting into archivis, the skill level and the amount of extremely good people is so high right now. Imo it's a extremely creative job compared to an architect, a lot of the time it's about whose the cheapest and it's usually outsourced to India which is a shame cause they're shit.

I'm trying to get into construction robotics if at all possible but I'm completely lost really about what I'm doing, I don't see myself as a BIM manager as I'd probably blow my brains out of boredom.

I retired right as Revit was just starting to come in so I thankfully avoided it.  I got to be pretty damned proefficient with AutoCad, though.  I learned it using the self-teach method, but that requires that you own (or steal) the program to use at home.

One of the biggest problems I found was that people in the office had varying degrees of proficiency, and that many times when they hit an obstacle they did some really screwy workaround that fucked up everything (rather than taking their ear buds out and asking someone how to solve their problem).  We only discovered the problems after the person had moved on.  Then, an enormous amount of time was spent in cleaning up the mess.  One guy did an entire set of working drawings without turning on ortho, because he didn't know about it.  You can imagine what that did to dimensions.  Another contract drafter handed back a set, but when we tried to change something we couldn't fillet the lines despite Z coordinate being on zero.  No amount of troubleshooting could correct the problem.  Don't get me started!!  Cry out loud.

AutoDesk has made it so that, when one user upgrades or uses some feature or other, EVERYBODY in the chain has to follow suit if they are sharing files (one of the reasons cad is supposedly so efficient).  It would be like the car companies owning the oil industry and changing the gasoline formula every few years to force you to buy new cars.  Brilliantly cynical strategy.  You have to give them credit.

As noted before, you'll have to work on small projects in small firm if you don't want to learn it, but even then you are fighting a loosing battle.  It's a bad idea whose time has come.

Even if you decide it is not worth the trouble to learn Revit, if you are managing people that use it or negotiating fees, it is worth it to have someone teach you some basics about how the program organizes information, and what it does/doesn't do easily. Production times are often different than in cad.

I'm not totally sure why this is such an issue.  I recently switched to a firm that is about half cad half Revit. 

I don't really know revit well at all.  I have mostly used it to separate actual architect job postings from software architects.  I present myself as a generally intelligent person who can pickup whatever software is being used in short order.  Since I was applying to Project Architect or PM type positions, and not CAD/BIM monkey work, it was never an issue.

every software, tool, pencil, paper is just a vehicle to an end varying wildly in quality.  Pick the quickest, simplest and cleanest tool to execute the task at hand.  Revit produces a well coordinated set of drawings, but it also forces inexperienced designers to BS their way through problems they don't know how to solve, on the flip side, experienced architects usually don't have the digital skill set to learn an use the software in a productive way...so there you go.  

you shouldn't be spending any time clicking revit check boxes.  that's what view templates and filters are for.  a proper bim manager will shelter his production staff from revit's bullshit as much as possible. it sounds like your firm suffers from bad bim practices.

but at 20 years, why are you opening revit at all?  isn't your time and expertise better spent in SD/DD, meeting with clients, doing CA...

i'd find a position that limits your exposure from lower level production tasks

It's probably useful for OP to gain a moderate understanding of Revit even if s/he isn't doing monkey work, which we'd hope not with 20+ years experience. But OP may need to open up a file and navigate the model, even gasp, print something from the model. At the very least as a PM one should be able to direct the Revit monkeys.

OP statement sounds like he wants to be at a bigger better firm and he feels like Revit is holding him back from that position. One would then assume such a firm has both IT and BIM managers in house. So squabbles about who is responsible for folder and template management, in this scenario, are moot. Also it has become common practice for those roles to overlap and intertwine in smaller offices - to the point where both umbrellas of responsibility are posted in the job ad. A 20 person firm probably doesn't need 2 people handling IT and BIM, for example, one person is plenty.

Revit is the worst software out there until you compare it with the rest.

We design buildings, not drawings.

Get the design intent and scope in there, make a profit. If the resulting building is good, you win. If not, figure out where you fucked up. Most of the time the culprit won't be "The Revit".

You can add lineweights to elevations by family. So yes it's totally possible to make them 'not suck' if you 'know what you're doing'. Most complaints about Revit are rooted in user error. Even touching every line in a Revit elevation still takes less time than drawing say a 5 story building from sd to cd in cad. If there is legitimately little to no repetition of components Revit won't save you much more time. The more repeated elements are present the more time is saved by opting for Revit. This is generally the central argument for using it in anything over a few thousand square feet. Repetitive mass manufactured components is what it was built for, and the vast majority of projects out there also use mass produced parts, hence a common situation where Revit is fastest. But sure there are rare instances where one may need to hyper accurately convey depth via an elevation despite having multiple plans, details and sections which do the same thing. Unless you plan to frame your elevations museum style, it's quite unlikely the line weights are all that terribly imperative to convey design intent and serve their legal purpose as instructions to your contractor.