job backwards

English

Verb

job backwards (third-person singular simple present jobs backwards, present participle jobbing backwards, simple past and past participle jobbed backwards)

1. (intransitive, chiefly finance) To reassess one's original decisions (e.g. investments) with hindsight, determining how they might have been better chosen.
   • 1941, The Economist, volume 140, page 46:

     They maintain that Sir William has "jobbed backwards"; that people who invested in the mines were indulging in a speculation, and that because the speculation has failed the whole matter has been considered by Sir William as if it concerned […]

   • 1969, Ian Charles Rayner Byatt, Adrian Victor Cohen, An attempt to quantify the economic benefits of scientific research:

     […] it would seem necessary to undertake a series of ex post studies, selecting present major science-based industries and jobbing backwards so as to relate their present value to the network of scientific discoveries judged essential to them.