Where I work 'using namespace std' is explicitly forbidden, and rightly so for exactly the reasons you point out: there's way too many common names in std:: tha

Where I work 'using namespace std' is explicitly forbidden, and rightly so for exactly the reasons you point out: there's way too many common names in std:: that could clash with our own code. More broadly, 'using namespace' is strongly discouraged except for our own namespaces. In all but a very narrow set of exceptions, we prefer to make it immediately obvious what functions are from external dependencies when scanning the code. If the interviewer finds adding explicit namespaces 'confusing', the problem is with him, not you.