How do conference proceedings add to academic prestige? I come from mathematics and, for whatever reason, am trying to publish in theoretical computer science. I'm still trying to understand the role of conference proceedings, and I have two specific question about them. I have tried to phrase the questions so that the analogous questions in mathematics would not be opinion based; if you think they are opinion based here then that is interesting in an of itself, so I would be grateful if you could comment to explain this!

In maths, a common marker of academic prestige is the specific journals someone's articles appear in, while I understand in TCS conference proceedings are more important.


  Are some conferences better thought of than others? If not, then how do conference proceedings add to prestige?


In maths, there are four un-disputed "top" journals (Acta Mathematica, Annals of Mathematics, Inventiones Mathematicae, Journal of the American Mathematical Society), and then there is a large second tier of world-class journals which is too large to mention here and varies wildly between different areas of mathematics. Getting a single paper in one of these four journals is a fast track to a permanent job.


  Are there a small number of top, world-class conferences where getting an article in the proceedings stands out like a gold star? If so, what are they?


Any suggestions for further reading is also appreciated :-)
I don't think there is any TCS conference that would be a fast track to a permanent job.

STOC, FOCS, and SODA are the most competitive conferences, and papers in those will certainly look very good in your CV, but just one paper won't help that much with the career. To really stand out, you will need something more than that (say, lots of papers in STOC, FOCS, and SODA).