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Been on both sides - both as a freelancer programmer and as an employeer now - mostly programming, design and translation services. Top reviews in both roles.
As a freelancer - as a rule, it was very hard to work with US employers. Most of them were having low attention span, and tried to behave like a 'big boss' from cheap movies, invent strange rules etc. Tried to save every penny as well and were overall delusional and expected not just to get something for almost nothing, but some behaved like they were giving me a favor with their jobs. This behaviour wasn't even offending, it was just insanely stupid. I very rarely won contracts with US employers though, most of them prefered cheaper bids. The best employers were from Western Europe and Canada, been in touch with some of them for 10 years. Brits were somewhere in-between. Indians were just batshit insane, couldn't make myself even bid on their projects, so much shit was in their projects descriptions.
As an employer I was struck how much scam and unprofessionalism there is in freelancing world all around.
With translation to european non-english languages I have 2 of every 3 freelancers who tried to scam me doing automated translations instead of manual. And it is after prescreening, after I pay above average price and after I look up the freelancers profiles in Facebook to be sure they are actual native speakers. Without such prescreening and with lower bids it will be 19 of 20 who will try to scam me, pretending they are native speakers.
Things are not so bad with programming jobs. If you write good and detailed specs in advance, with detailed workflow and mention exact technologies you want to see in the product, most of the freelancers do well with such projects. In case of anything bigger than a single php file you have to control freelancers almost day by day, at least the cheaper ones, and set milestones.
With design you just have to be sure that the portfolio you see is actual work of the designer, not just some stolen content. Need to look up their profiles on deviantart and simlar sites. But design is a difficult thing anyway.
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