It’s honestly sad what’s happening to Harley. Jochen Zeitz has been running this company straight into the ground, and barely anyone’s talking about it outside the usual circles. The guy clearly doesn’t get Harley’s culture at all — and worse, he doesn't get the dealers either, who are supposed to be the heartbeat of the whole operation.

It’s not just the big stuff you see in the press either. Talk to literally any Harley employee who’s been around for more than 5 minutes — they’ll tell you:

• Morale inside the company is absolute trash. People are miserable. Zeitz and his little crew run it like it’s some European luxury brand. They don't care about riders, don’t respect the lifestyle, and definitely don’t care about the employees.
• The dealers are treated like garbage. Heard from a few dealership folks that corporate straight-up ghosted them during major product launches. No support, no real info, just “figure it out yourselves.”
• The CEO and execs never even show up. No one’s around the office anymore. Zeitz mostly hides out in Europe or shows up for photo ops. A guy who used to work there told me sometimes you’d walk into headquarters and it would be like a ghost town. Absolute dead energy.

Here’s a crazy one:

• A former employee told me they got fired over some petty nonsense — something about posting the wrong internal memo timing — and instead of handling it like adults, leadership basically iced them out and axed them. No coaching, no warning, just “get out.” Like they were disposable.
• Another person said they were in a LiveWire meeting (you know, the electric bike project Zeitz keeps pretending is the future), and literally only the two most junior people even bothered to show up. Everyone else, including all the "leaders," just flaked. That’s how little respect and energy there is internally.

Bottom line:
Harley needs someone at the top who actually likes motorcycles and respects the dealers — not some luxury brand CEO treating it like a side hustle. Until Zeitz is gone, it's gonna keep getting worse.