If you have an established site
 

Would you hire local programmers or do you still outsource.. like hiring people via messageboards.

Local in house.

local always.

for god sake please don't use freelancer sites its not worth the hassle

yes. thats what i thought. Did you guys have bad stories? like programmers ruining your flagship site, messing up your SEO , stealing your code etc etc?

Mostly money down the drain in our case.

100% every 3rd world person i have look at my sites has fucked them up i had the same site built twice and still did not work the way i wanted it to.
i had a Russian guy do some work for me and was really good better than expected and now i use someone in the usa that i found on here that i pay after the work is done.

looks to me like you want to be a professional driver without driving license ...

Seems Russian programmers are good :)

In house. We out source the odd design piece or textual work but all programming is done in house.