It seems like it is doing some sort of weird passing by value thing to me

Yes, but it's not weird, it's doing exactly what you're telling it -- passing a string that you're then trying to dereference. Look at hardburn's post and you'll see the critical difference is the backslash preceding the scalar.

&change($thingy); # passes by value
&change(\$thingy); # creates and passes a *reference*
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"The dead do not recognize context" -- Kai, Lexx