I regularly interact with devs and project managers in Eastern Europe. Their quality is top-notch and their English is good enough you'll forget they're not natives. Most importantly, their mentality is American. Like... weirdly American.

Yes means yes, no means no, "how was your weekend" and then down to business. It's a pleasure interacting with them.

There must be different strains of American out there.

There’s no such thing as an American… until you work closely with other cultures and suddenly there’s definitely such a thing as an American

I do as well, and agree 100%.

Funny story, the lead on our Eastern European team told me a while back that he had to tell his team:

When the North Americans ask at the beginning of a meeting "How's it going?", they do NOT really want to know how you are doing. It's just social lubrication before getting to work.

Before that, we were getting to learn that their mother in-laws in town or different medical issues.

My companies been pretty turbulent since COVID so I’ve had to do a lot of near shore and off shore hiring. “You get what you pay for” still mostly holds true. There’s a lot of arbitrage in junior devs, but good senior talent has mostly realized they can get a lot more.

I can’t imagine ever working with India, etc again though. If you’re already eating the time zone cost Eastern Europe is much better.