From my stint working in the bay area, it seems like tons of older low level executives at tech companies (probably bringing in comparable income to staff engineers at FAANG) treat angel investing like golf. Most of the wealthy folks will do it at least once as a social activity, but most of them don't really know what they're doing.
Not sure how common but I know quite a few angel investors that have just been employees at tech companies. Most weren’t even at primarily FAANG companies. Realistically at least by SV income standards, it doesn’t take much to be an entry level angel investor.
Correction: an individual income - 200k/yr as of Oct-15, 2020 [1]
> Any natural person who had an individual income in excess of $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with that person's spouse in excess of $300,000 in each of those years and has a reasonable expectation of reaching the same income level in the current year
Maybe for salary but not for TC. I suspect median TC in the bay area is close to $250,000 just because of how many people are earning $300k+ at public companies.