But yes, it will (sorta) work placed backwards;
I've had a number
of maddening debugging sessions that all boiled down to "I forgot
the standard pin ordering on a TO92 package", since the transistor
will *work* backwards, but is much weaker than expected.
There is a standard pin ordering on the TO92 pacakge??? I am sure I've
seen just about all 6 possible permutations of the electrode conenctions...
-tony