It does not place software creators at a lower payscale - all the software creators I know in academia are at the payscale level where they should be given their experience, however, all of them have a PhD or are in the process of getting one very soon.

My point is that it places outsiders (no matter if they're going to do software development or something else) on a lower payscale until they catch up on all the academia-specific factors of evaluation.

It's not a caste system between different types of activities, but rather a barrier of entry - in some sense, you have to start from 'level 1' no matter how much experience you have in other fields, so inexperienced people can join easily, but for senior/experienced people doing it is possible but costly.

It’s not a caste system, rather a capitalist imitation where the capital is impact factor and grants and first authorship in nature and science. In this system software creators are just means to an end, and good software engineers are an irrational cost given the PhD student that can churn out working code for same impact factor for less money.