Electronics question: Do resistors work both ways?

Yes, resistors work both ways. The gold/yellow stripe only is relevate to the tolerance.

Resistance is resistance is resistance.
Everything in a circuit provides a little bit of “ohms” for the poor. Resistors are handy because they allow you to choose just exactly how much resistance you want. Anyway @X already answered your question so….

Resistors do not care.

Most other things do though; transistors, capacitors, and diodes are unidirectional.

Yes, however reading color stripes is only in one direction.

@jerv Capacitors don’t generally care either except for electrolytic caps, which are polarized. Inductors also don’t care.

@gasman Most capacitors I’ve dealt with were electrolytic though. As for inductors, that is why I said “most”, since you are correct that they don’t care either.