Does working in a research group with poor funding means poor future prospects post graduation? Background:
I am pursuing PhD in a Canadian University in mechanical engineering.
My PhD work is computational and I work in collaboration with experimental groups. I am in my 4th year and I have published two journal papers till now. The funding in my group acquired by my PI is always in collaboration with some experimental professor in our department.
These experimental professors have direct contact with big industries and other large universities. It always feels as if my group is piggybacking on the influence/success of the experimental groups.
Now my advisor has good standing in computational mechanics research community, but I don't think she has the influence to acquire funding without the help of the experimental groups. All the past members of my group were Chinese and they have got academic positions in China and few are pursuing postdoc. I think many wanted to stay in Canada and enter into industry but couldn't due to poor contacts of my advisor. While the graduates of the experimental group go into both academia and industry due to their advisor's closer contacts.
Goal: I want to be in academia but I am also open for research scientist position in Industry.
Issue: However, I have a feeling that considering my research group has poor funding record, it means I will always have poor future prospects post graduation.
Question: Is this analysis true?
This is hard to judge without knowing a lot more about why there is a lack of funding. It might be a local problem, in which case you might be fine. But if the funders generally don't value this field or even this line of inquiry within it then you could wind up in trouble. In that case, you need to be prepared to be flexible in the lines of inquiry that you commit to.
There is an especially sad case at the moment. The woman  Katalin Karikó who did the fundamental research (mRNA) that led to the development of two of the current COVID-19 vaccines, was, if I understand it correctly, denied promotion to full professor at the University of Pennsylvania since she was unable to attract sufficient funding for her research. Finding no future there, she left for industry. Moreover, her research shows promise for attacking cancer generally, which is a pretty big deal.
This was extremely short sighted on the part of Penn, of course, but at top universities funding can be a critical issue. And, of course, it is also proof that even the funders of research don't understand the nature of research and the impossibility of a guaranteed outcome. There can be a certain risk aversion that is counterproductive, though funds are limited.

I suspect that Penn is kicking itself at the moment as it doesn't share in the recent mRNA patents. Perhaps that is a suitable comeuppance.