I was speaking with few of professors in my department about submission to high profile conferences like CHI in Human Computer Interaction. Most of the professors were of opinion that acceptance in most of these high profile conferences (typical acceptance rate of less than 20%) is heavily influenced by politics like even though you may have comparatively good research, the editors will most likely be more favored toward accepting papers published by MS research or Google research or from other profile universities where they have close relationship with the faculty and researchers.

The professors advised me against spending time and resources on publishing to these conferences and instead concentrate on second ring journals (like those published by Springer) for better ROI of my efforts.

I assume in good faith that most of the editors may not reject papers without reading them, but does anybody concur with opinion of professors at my department?