The original article is in Russian, and here for our mentality this is not such unacceptable sarcastic exaggeration. But it may be too strong for a Western reader. So this can be considered as a little translation glitch (IMO).
"Well paid trolls", hmm... the monthly salary of Savhuk was 37,000 roubles monthly after taxes (by her words) what equals to ~$750. This is not a lot in St. Petersburg.
And there's a lot of trolls around russian web resources (don't know, on salary or not), especially when some politic issues are being discussed. Actually, it is not possible to do a constructive discussion at any russian forum, no matter if this is pro-Russian or pro-West. So, I prefer to not visit any places where political issues are being discussed.
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.
I'm agree that there's a passion among developers for such contests in Moscow, too. But my point is that this is not something "prestigious" and as a consequence a reason why many people "spending a lot of time" for it.
I mean you will not get any major benefits for investing in this, or something. It's interesting but not must-have for a professional developer. And that's why I not see a lot of people around coding contest-like tasks instead of, for example, contibuting to open source or doing freelance job, etc.
As a russian software developer from Moscow I can say that this contest is not well-known in Russia software community and it is completely not obvious that this contest is prestigious in some way. It may give you some points on the interview, but is not key point at all.
Actually, most of russian software developers even do not know about this contest.
Wrapping up, it is very, very weak statement that this contest is "very prestigious in Russia" and many people "are spending a lot of time to prepare". I think that ITMO have a good base for this contest is a more reasonable point.