Equity Research at Bank vs IG, High Yield & Leveraged Loans Research at Asset Manager

I'm in credit research on the sell-side and I thoroughly enjoy it. Fixed income is much more versatile -- gives you the keys to HY, loans, distressed/rx, CLOs, special sits, opportunistic, MBS/ABS, CDS. Sky's the limit. Less competition. More opportunity to generate alpha. 50+ analysts cover AAPL or MSFT stock while some distressed names might have only 2 analysts. Lot more room for thought leadership, whereas the 49th analyst covering AAPL pretty much has the same bullet points as the 48th one. Credit people can also cover multiple sectors (i.e. one analyst covering 70+ names across TMT/Healthcare/Financials and another guy covering 100 names across Industrials/Utilities/Energy). 

ER is a bit more assumptions-based, publishing-focused, and "in the weeds". Bit more academia-like. You're siloed into a subsector (i.e. hospitals or machinery) with the same 10-20 companies. Some people like that, though. Just make sure you work under a good ER analyst or else your life will be hell. That person pretty much dictates your mood 24/7. You'll spend more time with him/her than at home with your family.