Credit vs Equity Career at LO AM

Another apples to oranges comparison thread, but I'll give it a shot. I worked at a credit manager, and a friend of mine is an equity PM at one of the shops you mentioned.

Investing mindset: Generally both credit and equity tend to have your fundamental bottom up shops, more trading oriented firms, benchmark huggers, etc., but worth noting that offered products can make a big difference. Some equity mutual funds can be more flexible (e.g. longer time horizon, less focus on vol, more thematic investing), while credit asset managers typically have significantly more constraints. For example, CLOs are competitive products that require really strict adherence to allocations across ratings, sector, duration and given the securitized structure, buyers being insurance cos, etc., performing credit shops will care a lot about even the fewest bps of outperformance, WARF, and other factors that don't apply to equity side. Equity tends to be competitive for a different reason (e.g. spreads are arbed out, quant players, fund flow driven, ETFs, etc.)

WLB: I would say both have pretty good WLB ranging from 50 to 60 hours. Maybe some more intensive shops can get to 80 hours during earnings season. Really depends on how lean the team is (how big each analyst's coverage is).

Comp: Anecdotally, it seems credit side pays more at junior level; can debate complexity of product, but credit AM hiring tends to favor slightly more experienced associates with one to three years of sellside credit experience. Equity tends to hire straight from the gamut of undergrad to MBA. Can't speak to MBA pay, but undergrad pay seems to be low even accounting for WLB. Beyond that, other factors to consider include fees (typically compressed for both equity and credit), AUM (asset aggregation is name of the game), how wide the bench is (hierarchy, number of PMs, analyst promotes). I would guess equity is generally higher comp as a PM at a top shop, but there are a lot more PM seats at a lot more credit shops. Really hard to compare here lol.

Career progression: junior analyst, senior analyst, junior PM, senior PM typically tends to be the standard for both equity and credit. There's a lot of people on this forum that talk about LO seats being incredibly coveted, but I think one thing to note is that most firms I've interacted with are incredibly slow to change, slow to promote, and incredibly political in rewarding individual contribution. The goal of having multiple PMs and multiple analysts is to reduce reliance on individuals, as such, you might not have as many opportunities to really highlight your skills as a junior which in turn prevents you from working your way up the ladder. Star performance only matters insofar as it helps raise capital, and the return profile doesn't really aim for home runs, so might not be as meritocratic as you expect. PMs tend to be in their seats longer which may also cause firms to be top heavy with higher lower level churn, and given the job isn't rocket science, nepotism can play a big part in who gets tapped for new opportunities. Maybe ask an equity person for their take on this as it may differ for large firms with more structured programs.