Pursuing AM

Nature of the work is intellectually stimulating (investment research and developing a thesis with alpha generation as a goal), usually great hours, and great pay at the senior levels.

Pros: intellectually stimulating, minimal politics (not nonexistent but minimal), better compensation per hour, output oriented (if you are good, you can work 5 hours a week and produce 5 alpha-generating ideas, most don't but just illustrative)

Cons: daily mark-to-market (no matter how long-term oriented your firm is, no PM likes losing paper money); most good lifestyle AM firms have flat or declining asset growth; low geographic mobility (which is true for finance in general but more acute as most AM firms are in handful cities); not where most money is made nowadays (more companies stay private longer given abundance of VC $)

Pros: better lifestyle, intellectually stimulating at times, high job security

Cons: fee compression, generally competitive industry / lack of differentiation, management will typically focus resources on LP trends (e.g. quant, private credit), huge pay disparity at most levels, firms typically don't want PMs to be too important to the product, research analysts are a nameless aggregated fixed cost