A pop-up changed her life.

In 2011, Kia Hamel, a US Navy veteran, was forced to move to Washington when her husband, then in the Navy, was transferred to the Pentagon. Before the move, Hamel had found work with a string of US government agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Defense, figuring the skills she picked up as an operations specialist aboard the USS Nimitz in the 1990s would serve her well continuing to work for Uncle Sam.

Then the sequester happened.

"All of the jobs pretty much that I had applied for, they closed and never reopened," Hamel told Motherboard. "Or it would take a year to even get an interview. Basically, the government jobs just never panned out."