If you mean companies such Yandex, Mail, ABBYY (but not Kaspersky, huh) or something like that - I agree. Winners of ACM will get "preferred treatment", definetely. This will not affect their salaries a lot, but that's true.

But you missed my point. I argue that ACM is something extremely prestigious and people practicies a lot in mass. This is not true. And companies such Yandex and Mail is not a some kind of great place to work.

But if I will interview a candidate and know he participated (not won) in ACM I will be much more interested in him.

But there's not so many such candidates, mm..? )