Submit manuscript to tier A conference or wait and submit to A* conference? Suppose you have a manuscript and you have just missed the deadline for an A* conference. Should I submit to the next tier A conference or wait until for the A* conference to come around again?

I am in the computer science field, hence the emphasis on conferences, rather than journals.
Suppose you have a manuscript and you have just missed the deadline for an A* conference. Should I submit to the next tier A conference or wait until for the A* conference to come around again?


This depends on a number of factors:


How likely do you think your paper is to be accepted in the A* conference? If this is your absolute best, cream-of-the-crop paper and you are confident it will go through, then submitting to a weaker conference just because you did not want to wait will feel like waste down the road. If the A* conference felt like a long shot anyway, go ahead and submit now.
How likely are you to get scooped? If you are doing cutting-edge research in a trending topic, you may want to go for the A conference simply because you are afraid that somebody else may publish before you if you don't.
How important is timely publishing for your content? Many great research papers are in essence timeless, but occasionally one has produced a paper that is of value to the community right now, but which may be much less interesting in a year (e.g., some empirical studies in fast-moving fields are like that). In that case you should submit to the A conference now, because there is a very real danger that the paper will not be good enough for the A* paper in a year anyway.
How important is having the paper out soon for your career progression? E.g., if you are handing in your PhD in a year, or plan to be on the job market in a year, or plan to hand in this selective personal grant in the next year, then having another published A paper may be better than a potential A* paper that comes "too late".
How much value is (in your field and your circles) placed on the "esteem" of the venue? That is, what do you estimate how much more valuable the same paper will be for your career if published in an A* venue rather than an A venue? In a perfect world, it would not matter. In the real world, as for instance in my field, the venue a publication appeared in is ultimately more important in career decisions on all levels than the actual content.