I'm in Melbourne, Australia, but my main developer is in California. We communicate with Skype.
I think user-oriented sites need good communication between designers and coders, so having a native English speaker was a top priority. Additionally I've generally been impressed with US coders. I also needed someone with a good knowledge of multiple programming languages (rather than a 'solve everything with Perl' guy), and AJAX experience which is surprisingly lacking elsewhere (check out the development history of all those Indian and Hungarian companies on eLance - they might be a fifth the price, but they're generally pretty terrible).
Somewhere after public beta I'll head to SF again for a few months, maybe permanently. When I do, my dev team team will already be there.
I think user-oriented sites need good communication between designers and coders, so having a native English speaker was a top priority. Additionally I've generally been impressed with US coders. I also needed someone with a good knowledge of multiple programming languages (rather than a 'solve everything with Perl' guy), and AJAX experience which is surprisingly lacking elsewhere (check out the development history of all those Indian and Hungarian companies on eLance - they might be a fifth the price, but they're generally pretty terrible).
Somewhere after public beta I'll head to SF again for a few months, maybe permanently. When I do, my dev team team will already be there.