Your authority band is the structural altitude at which you actually operate. Here is a four-question self-check that reveals where you sit, and where you need to move.
Your Authority Band is the structural altitude at which you actually operate, independent of your job title. It is the single strongest predictor of how insulated your role is from AI compression. The AI Career Index measures it precisely through the full assessment, but you can get a directional reading in four questions, in about five minutes, with no software at all. The self-check below produces a band estimate that is usually accurate within one band of the full assessment.
Question 1: Who signs off on your work?
If your work ships once someone more senior reviews and approves it, you are operating below the authority threshold. If you own the final sign-off and the accountability sits with you, you are at or above it. This is the most important of the four questions because the accountability layer is exactly where AI compression stops.
Test: name the last three significant pieces of work you produced. Whose name was on the final version that went out? If yours, you carry sign-off authority. If someone else's, you do not (yet). Some Architect-band roles distribute sign-off across collaborators; if you are one of three named owners, that counts.
Question 2: What happens if your work is wrong?
If being wrong means the team redoes the work, you are in the execution layer. If being wrong means the business takes a hit, the company faces regulatory exposure, or a client loses trust, you are in the accountability layer. The latter is structurally insulated because the cost of delegating that judgement to software is higher than the cost of keeping a human in the loop.
Test: imagine your last decision being wrong. What is the worst plausible consequence? If 'rework', you're at the production layer. If 'lost client / regulatory consequence / financial impact / public-relations issue', you're at the accountability layer.
Question 3: How much of your work could be replicated by a well-instructed junior?
If 70% or more of your weekly output could be produced by a junior with a good process manual, your authority band is structural execution. If it requires your specific judgement, your specific relationships, or your specific context, you are operating at a higher band. Generative AI is functionally the best-instructed junior ever created; anything it can do, your authority band cannot depend on.
Test: imagine training a smart, eager junior to do your job over six months with full process documentation. What share of your week could they reasonably handle by month four? If 'most', you're production-tier. If 'almost none of the consequential work', you're architect-tier.
Question 4: Do you shape what gets built, or execute against a brief?
People who shape scope, prioritise against competing outcomes, and define success criteria sit at a higher band than those who execute against a given brief. This is not about seniority in the org chart. It is about whether the work starts from your judgement or from someone else's.
Test: for your last major piece of work, who decided what success looked like? Who chose between competing priorities? Who set the scope? If you, you're shaping. If someone else, you're executing. Many senior-titled roles read as executing on this test, which is the diagnostic that exposes title-only seniority.
Reading the four answers
All four 'higher' answers. Architect or Authority band. Among the most insulated positions in the dataset. Priority: protection and visibility.
Three 'higher' answers. Architect band. Durable position with one component to firm up.
Two 'higher' answers. Operator band. Bimodal exposure depending on which two. Migration upward is high-leverage.
One 'higher' answer. Execution-leaning Operator. The migration is the priority over the next 12-18 months.
Zero 'higher' answers. Execution band. The migration is urgent. The executor-to-architect migration playbook is the canonical move.
Common surprises
Senior titles testing as Operator or Execution. The most common surprise. The day-to-day reality lags the title; the role has accumulated tasks faster than authority. The structural risk is real because the salary is at the senior level but the structural protection is at the lower band.
Junior titles testing as Architect. Less common but real. Some smaller-organisation roles concentrate genuine authority in title-light positions. These professionals are usually appreciating fast and may not realise the durability they have.
Cross-functional roles testing inconsistently across the questions. Common for HRBPs, project managers, internal consultants. The four-question test is directional; the full assessment refines the reading by looking at additional structural inputs.
What to do with your reading
If three or four of your answers land in the lower position, your band is compressing. Your structural priority is band migration through the operator-to-architect or executor-to-architect playbook. If three or four land in the higher position, your band is insulated and your priority is making that authority visible to the market and protecting the position. Either way, the full AI Career Index turns these directional answers into a quantified reading, an Authority Migration Probability projection, and a 6-month plan.
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