Harley-Davidson Seeks New CEO, While Grappling With Sales Slump, Tariffs

Wanted: CEO for iconic (but challenged) motorcycle maker.

Harley-Davidson is seeking a replacement for Chief Executive Jochen Zeitz, who the company said Tuesday plans to retire after five years on the job.

Harley said it retained an executive search firm late last year after Zeitz expressed interest in retiring. He will remain in his position until a successor is chosen.

During his tenure, Zeitz has boosted Harley’s profit but has seen sales of the bikes continue to decline . The company last year sold 151,000 motorcycles worldwide, less than half as many as it sold in 2008.

Shares in Harley and other power-sports manufacturers dropped sharply Tuesday as investors’ worries about tariffs and a possible recession mounted. Harley stock closed at $20.82, down nearly 9%.

Zeitz, a longtime board member, took over in 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold and kept the Milwaukee-based company running , despite factory closings and supply-chain tangles. As CEO he has prioritized profits over volume, cutting money-losing entry-level bikes from the lineup to focus on more expensive cruising and touring models.

The strategy was different than one implemented by his predecessor, Matt Levatich, whose “More Roads to Harley-Davidson” plan called for dozens of new models to broaden the brand’s appeal. Levatich left the company after an activist investor said the approach had led to poor financial performance.

Zeitz has said Harley is faring better than its competitors, as the industry suffers from high interest rates and low consumer confidence. Harley’s prospects have also been shaken in the trade war launched by the Trump administration, with the European Union threatening to impose 50% tariffs on the company’s bikes .

The motorcycle maker said in March that bikes imported into the U.S., which receive a 2.4% tariff at most, should face reciprocal duties to even the playing field.

Harley’s network of dealers often criticized Zeitz as being out of touch with the brand’s distinct culture. He grew up in Germany and had made his name rescuing sportswear company Puma , but as sales continued to decline, some said he didn’t understand what made Harley riders tick.

“This company has a great future under someone else’s direction,” said Mark Forszt , a dealer with six locations in Indiana. “Hopefully they’ll bring someone in with knowledge of Harley-Davidson culture.”

Justin Johnson, operating partner at St. Paul Harley-Davidson in Minnesota, gave Zeitz credit for kick-starting the development of popular new touring models that came out last year.

“That was the fastest I’ve ever seen Harley bring something to market,” Johnson said.

Harley faces numerous challenges, including an aging customer base. Dealers say entry-level models have failed to capture the appeal of their predecessor, the Sportster, which was phased out to comply with tightening air-quality standards.

The company’s electric-motorcycle spinoff, LiveWire , which launched in 2019, has seen losses in excess of $100 million while shipping fewer than 700 bikes in each of the past two years. Zeitz indicated on a quarterly conference call in February that he was losing patience with the project.

Zeitz was thrust into America’s culture wars last summer when conservative activist Robby Starbuck accused Harley of becoming “totally woke” under the CEO’s leadership. That stirred up a whirlwind of social-media criticism, including some from elected officials, and the company backed away from some initiatives.

There has rarely, if ever, been so much tech talent available in the job market. Yet many tech companies say good help is hard to find.

What gives?

U.S. colleges more than doubled the number of computer-science degrees awarded from 2013 to 2022, according to federal data. Then came round after round of layoffs at Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts businesses will employ 6% fewer computer programmers in 2034 than they did last year.

All of this should, in theory, mean there is an ample supply of eager, capable engineers ready for hire.

But in their feverish pursuit of artificial-intelligence supremacy, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. The few perceived as AI savants can command multimillion-dollar pay packages. On a second tier of AI savvy, workers can rake in close to $1 million a year .

Landing a job is tough for most everyone else.

Frustrated job seekers contend businesses could expand the AI talent pipeline with a little imagination. The argument is companies should accept that relatively few people have AI-specific experience because the technology is so new. They ought to focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.

Often, though, companies seem to hold out for dream candidates with deep backgrounds in machine learning. Many AI-related roles go unfilled for weeks or months—or get taken off job boards only to be reposted soon after.

Playing a different game

It is difficult to define what makes an AI all-star, but I’m sorry to report that it’s probably not whatever you’re doing.

Maybe you’re learning how to work more efficiently with the aid of ChatGPT and its robotic brethren. Perhaps you’re taking one of those innumerable AI certificate courses.

You might as well be playing pickup basketball at your local YMCA in hopes of being signed by the Los Angeles Lakers. The AI minds that companies truly covet are almost as rare as professional athletes.

“We’re talking about hundreds of people in the world, at the most,” says Cristóbal Valenzuela, chief executive of Runway, which makes AI image and video tools.

He describes it like this: Picture an AI model as a machine with 1,000 dials. The goal is to train the machine to detect patterns and predict outcomes. To do this, you have to feed it reams of data and know which dials to adjust—and by how much.

The universe of people with the right touch is confined to those with uncanny intuition, genius-level smarts or the foresight (possibly luck) to go into AI many years ago, before it was all the rage.

As a venture-backed startup with about 120 employees, Runway doesn’t necessarily vie with Silicon Valley giants for the AI job market’s version of LeBron James. But when I spoke with Valenzuela recently, his company was advertising base salaries of up to $440,000 for an engineering manager and $490,000 for a director of machine learning.

A job listing like one of these might attract 2,000 applicants in a week, Valenzuela says, and there is a decent chance he won’t pick any of them. A lot of people who claim to be AI literate merely produce “workslop”—generic, low-quality material. He spends a lot of time reading academic journals and browsing GitHub portfolios, and recruiting people whose work impresses him.

In addition to an uncommon skill set, companies trying to win in the hypercompetitive AI arena are scouting for commitment bordering on fanaticism .

Daniel Park is seeking three new members for his nine-person startup. He says he will wait a year or longer if that’s what it takes to fill roles with advertised base salaries of up to $500,000.

He’s looking for “prodigies” willing to work seven days a week. Much of the team lives together in a six-bedroom house in San Francisco.

If this sounds like a lonely existence, Park’s team members may be able to solve their own problem. His company, Pickle, aims to develop personalised AI companions akin to Tony Stark’s Jarvis in “Iron Man.”

Overlooked

James Strawn wasn’t an AI early adopter, and the father of two teenagers doesn’t want to sacrifice his personal life for a job. He is beginning to wonder whether there is still a place for people like him in the tech sector.

He was laid off over the summer after 25 years at Adobe , where he was a senior software quality-assurance engineer. Strawn, 55, started as a contractor and recalls his hiring as a leap of faith by the company.

He had been an artist and graphic designer. The managers who interviewed him figured he could use that background to help make Illustrator and other Adobe software more user-friendly.

Looking for work now, he doesn’t see the same willingness by companies to take a chance on someone whose résumé isn’t a perfect match to the job description. He’s had one interview since his layoff.

“I always thought my years of experience at a high-profile company would at least be enough to get me interviews where I could explain how I could contribute,” says Strawn, who is taking foundational AI courses. “It’s just not like that.”

The trouble for people starting out in AI—whether recent grads or job switchers like Strawn—is that companies see them as a dime a dozen.

“There’s this AI arms race, and the fact of the matter is entry-level people aren’t going to help you win it,” says Matt Massucci, CEO of the tech recruiting firm Hirewell. “There’s this concept of the 10x engineer—the one engineer who can do the work of 10. That’s what companies are really leaning into and paying for.”

He adds that companies can automate some low-level engineering tasks, which frees up more money to throw at high-end talent.

It’s a dynamic that creates a few handsomely paid haves and a lot more have-nots.

Harley-Davidson Seeks New CEO, While Grappling With Sales Slump, Tariffs

Motorcycle maker says Jochen Zeitz plans to retire after five years in the role.

A divide has opened in the tech job market between those with artificial-intelligence skills and everyone else.

Playing a different game

Overlooked