That's much more sophisticated than for software engineers. I'm not trying to imply SEs are evaluated by sprint planning points and velocity, but a lot of that comes down to sprint planning points and velocity. Beyond that, you have performance reviews, and I've never been in a company which did that well.
Code reviews are nice. But even a lot of that is pattern matching sanity checks, little better than a lint program, when a team is rushed.
I mean, do Ph.Ds know how to architect maintainable code? Perhaps not. Have they been encultured in a culture which rewards cowboy individualistic douchebags? Without a doubt. Are they arrogantly convinced of their own superiority? For the first few years after graduating, at least from the "better" schools, more likely than not, yes.
But I think your comments about lacking esoteric knowledge are completely off-base. Ph.Ds thrive on esoteric knowledge.